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HOME  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 
OF  MODERN  KNOWLEDGE 

No.  66 

Editors: 

HERBERT   FISHER,  M.A.,  F.B.A. 
PROF.   GILBERT   MURRAY,  LiTT.D^ 

LL.D.,  F.B.A. 

PROF.  J.  ARTHUR    THOMSON,  M.A. 
PROF.  WILLIAM    T.  BREWSTER,  M.A. 


THE  HOME  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 
OF  MODERN  KNOWLEDGE 

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LITERATURE  AND  ART 

Already  Published 

SHAKESPEARE By  JOHN  MASEFIELD 

ENGLISH    LITERATURE- 
MODERN  By  G.  H.  MAIR 

LANDMARKS     IN     FRENCH 
LITERATURE By  G.  L.  STRACHEY 

ARCHITECTURE By  W.  R.  LETHABY 

ENGLISH    LITERATURE- 
MEDIEVAL  By  W.  P.  Ker 

THE    ENGLISH    LANGUAGE  .   .  By  L.  PEARSALL  SMITH 

GREAT  AMERICAN  WRITERS  .  By  W.  P.  TRENT  and  JOHN 

ERSKINE 

Future  Issues 

THE  WRITING   OF  ENGLISH  .  By  W.  T.  BREWSTER 
ITALIAN  ART  OF  THE  RENAIS- 
SANCE    By  ROGER  E.  FRY 

GREAT  WRITERS  OF  RUSSIA  .  By  C.  T.  HAGBERT  WRIGHT 
ANCIENT  ART  AND  RITUAL  .  By  Miss  JANE  HARRISON 
THE  RENAISSANCE By  MRS.  R.  A.  TAYLOR 


WRITING    ENGLISH 
PROSE 


BY 

WILLIAM  TENNEY  BREWSTER,  A.M. 

Professor  of  English  in  Columbia  University 

AUTHOR    OF 

"ENGLISH    COMPOSITION    AND    STYLE,"    "STUDIES    IN 
STRUCTURE    AND    STYLE,"    ETC. 


NEW  YORK 
HENRY  HOLT  AND   COMPANY 

LONDON 
WILLIAMS   AND   NORGATE 


COPYRIGHT,  1913, 

BY 
HENRY    HOLT  AND    COMPANY 


THE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS,   CAMBRIDGE,   U.S.A. 


CONTENTS 

CHAP.  PAGE 

I    WRITING  AND  THE  STUDY  OF  ENGLISH  COMPO- 
SITION      7 

II    GOOD  WRITING  AS  COMPOSITION 39 

III  NARRATION,  DESCRIPTION,  AND  EXPOSITION  .     .  79 

IV  ARGUMENTATION   ...........  103 

V    PARAGRAPHS 121 

VI    SENTENCES  AND  WORDS  :  STYLE 142 

VII    STYLE  :  CORRECTNESS 152 

VIII    STYLE  :  ECONOMY  AND  INCREMENT 176 

IX    STYLE  :  PURE  MOVEMENT 197 

X    STYLE  AND  COMPOSITION 220 

XI    METHODS  AND  APPLICATIONS 229 

NOTE  ON  BOOKS 249 

INDEX                                                            ,    .     .  251 


267379 


WEITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

CHAPTER  I 

WRITING  AND  THE  STUDY  OF  ENGLISH  COMPOSITION 

THE  familiar  jest  that  a  man  begins  to  write 
by  chewing  the  end  of  his  pencil,  —  or,  now-a- 
days,  of  his  typewriter,  —  is  based  on  the  tradi- 
tion that  writing  is  a  very  difficult  act.  Such 
words  as  style  and  composition  suggest  something 
that  is  outside  the  achievement  of  ordinary  mor- 
tals, and  in  thinking  of  these  terms  most  of  us, 
with  that  idealism  common  to  humanity,  are 
likely  to  shut  our  eyes  to  all  but  the  finer  aspects 
of  writing.  There  is,  however,  no  cause  for  alarm. 
The  truth  of  the  matter,  as  Mr.  Chesterton  would 
say,  is,  first,  that  writing,  along  with  speaking, 
eating,  sleeping,  putting  on  clothes,  and  com- 
ing out  of  the  rain,  is  one  of  the  great  universal 
acts  of  modern  life.  In  the  second  place,  it  is 
also  true  that  writing  is  in  its  finer  aspects  com- 
paratively rare,  a  distinction  which  it  shares 
with  speaking,  cookery,  dressing,  house-building, 
and  the  sleep  of  a  tranquil  and  untroubled  mind. 

This  common  act  of  writing  may  be  conven- 
iently called  informal  composition;  there  is  no 
need  to  enlarge  on  the  amount  and  variety  of 
7 


8  WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE. 

this  writing  that  is  actually  being  done  in  the 
world.  Each  of  the  countless  compositions  that 
see  the  light  of  each  new  day  is  a  specific  product, 
be  it  an  epigram,  a  business  letter,  a  sermon,  an 
epic  poem,  or  an  associated  press  despatch.  To 
better  any  of  these  specific  products  must  evi- 
dently be  the  aim  of  any  study  of  English  com- 
position. The  study  may  be  very  elementary 
and  occasional,  or  it  may  be  elaborate  and  pro- 
longed, but  it  has  in  view  the  same  end  as  the 
study  of  any  other  active  human  process,  the 
improvement  of  results,  of  whatever  kind,  through 
the  means  at  one's  disposal. 

How  is  this  done?  In  general,  the  common  way 
is  evidently  for  a  man  to  find  out  what  he  wishes 
to  say,  to  write  it  down,  to  look  it  over  and,  if 
necessary,  to  revise  it,  and  then  to  present  it  to 
whom  it  concerns.  In  this  act  you  make  use  of 
any  knowledge  or  advice  that  may  be  needful 
or  handy  for  the  bettering  of  the  product.  The 
great  questions  likely  to  be  applied  by  anybody, 
at  any  time,  to  any  piece  of  writing,  are  these: 
"  Does  it  say  what  was  intended  ?  "  "  Is  it  intelligi- 
ble?" "Is  it  said  in  as  interesting  and  as  agree- 
able a  manner  as  is  possible  or  necessary?" 
Answers  to  these  questions  are  never  twice  alike; 
for  the  subject,  the  detail,  and  the  occasion  of 
no  two  pieces  are  the  same.  Writing,  like  talk, 
is  nearly  always  directed  to  particular  people  or 
groups  of  people,  to  the  end  that  they  may  be 
informed,  or  enlightened,  or  interested,  or  per- 


ENGLISH  COMPOSITION  9 

suaded.  Any  study  whatever  of  literary  compo- 
sition is,  therefore,  in  the  first  instance,  simply 
the  human  process  of  making  more  intelligible 
or  more  interesting  or  more  persuasive  what  you 
are  going  to  write  or  what  you  have  written; 
and  in  the  process  you  employ  whatever  fore- 
thought or  knowledge  or  skill  or  criticism  you  care 
to  command.  That  is  the  gist  of  the  whole  matter 
which  is  the  subject  of  this  book. 

It  has  more  than  once  been  remarked  in  the 
course  of  the  present  series  of  books  that  most 
of  our  sciences  originate  in  our  humbler  ideas  and 
necessities,  and  are  really  nothing  more  than  an 
exact  statement  and  thorough  development  of 
them.  Thus  logic,  the  so-called  "science  of 
sciences,"  is  also  one  of  the  original  and  constant 
accompaniments  of  our  mental  life;  it  has,  how- 
ever, been  studied  and  formalized  into  the  diffi- 
cult mass  of  material  that  confronts  us  in  the 
pages  of  Mill  and  Jevons  and  other  most  useful 
writers.  In  like  manner,  out  of  the  multifarious 
acts  and  products  that  have  been  mentioned 
above  there  has  arisen  a  mass  of  knowledge  and 
doctrine  that  we  may  call  formal  English  com- 
position, the  art  of  arts  for  the  English  writing 
race,  in  that  it  has  to  do  with  the  great  practice 
of  written  communication  by  means  of  the  English 
language.  On  this  subject  there  are  literally  hun- 
dreds of  books;  the  present  book  is  one  of  them. 
These  books  evidently  cannot  plan,  or  write,  or 
revise  your  work  for  you,  nor  can  they  give  you 


10         WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

that  personal  and  particular  counsel  that  is  need- 
ful in  any  actual  writing.  What  they  try  to  do 
will  be  described  in  this  chapter;  the  remaining 
chapters  will  try  to  do  it  so  far  as  space  permits, 
for  lack  of  which  no  account  of  spoken  prose  or 
of  versification,  subjects  evidently  belonging  to 
English  composition,  will  be  attempted. 


In  order  better  to  understand  the  nature  of  the 
study  of  formal  English  composition,  let  us  give 
a  brief  account  of  the  medium  of  writing  in  Eng- 
lish and  of  certain  general  conditions  that  accom- 
pany the  act.  Many  of  these  are  common,  as  will 
appear,  to  writing  in  all  languages  and  also  to 
speaking.  On  them  all  sensible  study  of  English 
composition  must  be  based;  you  cannot  get  away 
from  them,  and  any  theory  of  writing  that  tried 
to  avoid  them  would  be  wild  and  useless. 

The  medium  is  the  English  language.  That 
language  is  better  understood  to-day,  in  a  scien- 
tific and  historical  sense,  than  ever  before;  what 
it  is  historically  and  actually  has  been  described 
by  Mr.  Pearsall  Smith  in  his  book  in  this  series. 
What  we  know  of  the  history  of  the  language  has, 
however,  very  little  to  do  with  that  composition 
that  we  all  practise,  and  even  in  the  formal  study 
of  the  subject  is  valuable  only  in  a  very  small 
way.  The  instrument  as  it  is  —  that  is  what  we 
have  to  work  with;  we  do  not  to-day  use  the 
language  of  Chaucer,  and  five  hundred  years 


ENGLISH  COMPOSITION  11 

hence  our  descendants  will  probably  be  express- 
ing themselves  in  a  way  that  to  us  would  seem  as 
strange.  It  may  be  remarked  incidentally  that, 
for  the  purposes  of  English  composition  as  it  is 
to-day,  the  chief  value  of  our  modern  scientific 
study  of  the  language  lies  in  its  encouragement  of 
freedom  and  even  of  innovation  in  expression, 
and,  generally  of  course,  in  telling  something  of 
the  instrument  which  we  daily  employ.  That 
instrument  is  the  present,  actual,  constantly 
shifting,  and  often  colloquial  body  of  words,  in 
which  every  man  has  varying  proprietary  rights. 
It  is  what  you  find  accounted  for  in  good  dic- 
tionaries, up  to  within  a  few  years  of  actual  usage. 
For  present  purposes,  it  may  be  described  as  (1)  a 
main  stream  of  familiar  and  intelligible  words, 
standing  for  current  ideas  and  customary  objects, 
and  also  as  (2)  a  number  of  side  currents,  rills, 
tributaries,  pools,  eddies,  standing  for  local, 
technical,  learned,  affected,  poetical,  slang,  obso- 
lete, vulgar,  literary,  and  various  other  vocabu- 
laries for  special  ideas  and  interests  which  may  at 
any  time  fall  under  a  writer's  hand.  Knowl- 
edge of  English  composition  is,  first,  some  work- 
ing knowledge  of  the  meanings  and  associations 
of  English  words. 

But  words,  for  the  most  part,  have  value  only 
when  combined  into  sentences.  Though  we  may 
often  converse  in  monosyllables  and  short  phrases, 
the  sentence  is  the  chief  instrument  for  the  state- 
ment of  fact.  The  remark  is  true  of  any  language, 


12         WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

and  it  is  perhaps  futile  here  to  attempt  to  de- 
scribe anything  so  variable  and  yet  so  well  known 
as  the  English  sentence.  It  would  seem  to  call  for 
a  commonly  understood  English  syntax,  that  is 
to  say,  the  relation  of  words  as  ordinarily  used 
in  English,  a  relation  which  is  formally  analyzed 
in  grammars.  This  arrangement  is  probably  much 
freer  than  the  syntax  of  most  other  modern  lan- 
guages, and  is  dependent  more  on  the  order  than 
on  the  form  of  words.  Here  again  a  writer  has 
so  to  combine  words  into  sentences  that  he  will 
ordinarily  be  understood. 

One  or  two  matters  of  fact  should  be  noted. 
Whatever  a  writer  says,  whatever  combinations 
of  words  into  sentences  he  uses  to  express  an 
idea,  will  not  be  precisely  like  any  other  com- 
bination ever  made,  unless  it  be  the  stock  phrase 
or  the  stock  sentence.  Otherwise,  he  would  have 
the  grace  to  use  quotation  marks.  The  combina- 
tion, however,  cannot  be  a  lawless  one;  it  is 
bound  by  the  ideas  to  be  expressed,  by  the  ordi- 
nary meanings  and  associations  of  words,  and  by 
preceding  and  following  sentences.  However 
original  and  erudite  the  idea,  it  has,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  to  be  expressed  mainly  by  words  from  the 
current  stream  of  English,  words  used  in  their 
ordinary  meaning,  modified  possibly  by  the 
writer's  ideas  of  suitability  or  taste,  or  his  desire 
to  include  such  by-products  as  originality  and 
style. 

Hence  any  written  product  is  very  largely 


ENGLISH  COMPOSITION  13 

made  up  not  only  of  ordinary  English  words  but 
also  of  expressions  that  may  be  called  "stock." 
Stock  phrases  are  often  the  sport  of  stylists  and 
rhetoricians.  The  objection  that  they  are  worn 
and  hackneyed,  have  lost  all  their  edge,  is  true 
of  many  of  the  words  that  we  meet  in  everyday 
writing,  but  not  of  the  majority.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  stock  expressions  indicate  a  natural  tend- 
ency against  which  it  is  wasteful  to  strive.  They 
are  an  intellectual  shorthand;  most  of  the  busi- 
ness of  life  is  done  by  their  aid;  they  help  us,  like 
habits  and  customs.  A  business  letter,  for  ex- 
ample, is  usually  a  series  of  stock  expressions  — • 
standing  for  facts,  observations,  indignation,  sur- 
prise, remonstrance,  request,  —  interspersed  with 
special  data  to  fit  occasions.  So,  too,  are  most 
sermons,  editorials,  government  reports,  stump 
speeches,  and  many  other  good  things.  Hence 
"complete  letter- writers,"  Marconi  codes,  tele- 
phone talks,  etc.  Even  great  men  of  letters  can- 
not spend  all  their  time  in  trumping  up  new  ideas 
and  facts,  in  coining  new  phrases  to  fit  them/  or 
in  giving  new  life  to  old  words;  but  must,  for  the 
most  part,  take  refuge  in  phrases  that  have  been 
used  a  hundred  times  before.  A  certain  type  of 
mind,  indeed,  is  worried  by  phrases  that  have  not 
been  used  a  hundred  times  before,  condemning 
all  innovations  as  "bad  English."  The  only  real 
objection  to  stock  expression  is  that  it  may  not 
stand  for  stock  ideas.  Since  most  ideas  are  com- 
mon enough,  ready-made  phrases  are  indispen- 


14         WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

sable.  Even  the  most  original  writer,  the  highly 
technical  writer,  the  poet,  the  racy  raconteur, 
the  amateur  of  slang,  the  American  journalist,  — 
any  man  whose  language  is  a  little  out  of  custom, 
—  is  aberrant  only  in  a  very  small  percentage  of 
instances;  he  darts  occasionally  to  the  sides  of 
the  stream  or  momentarily  flounders  in  an 
eddy. 

It  is  also  true  of  language  that  though,  ideally, 
no  two  combinations  of  words  into  sentences  mean 
exactly  the  same  thing,  yet  a  dozen  different  ways 
of  expressing  an  idea  may,  in  actual  practice,  be 
equally  good.  I  could  have  said,  had  I  not  hit 
upon  the  other  phrase  first,  that,  among  several 
different  ways  of  saying  a  thing,  it  would  be  hard 
to  choose  the  best;  or  I  could  have  said  that  it 
really  makes  little  difference  which  of  a  dozen  or 
more  similar  phrases  a  writer  chooses,  provided 
all  are  clear,  grammatical,  and  truly  state  some 
fact.  These  three  versions  do  not  mean  quite 
the  same  thing,  but  the  differences  are  of  very 
slight  moment;  in  ordinary  and  untechnical  dis- 
course they  would  be  disregarded.  So-called 
"inevitable  phrases"  are  very  rare  in  prose,  rarer 
than  in  poetry,  where  verse  at  once  demands 
more  restriction  and  permits  more  freedom  for 
fancy,  for  dislocation  of  normal  order,  and  for 
that  unexpectedness  of  word  and  phrase  which 
is  highly  prized  in  literature  and  is  beyond  rule 
and  precedent.  It  is  quite  possible  to  rephrase 
many  of  the  sentences,  not  only  of  our  good,  but 


ENGLISH  COMPOSITION  15 

also  of  our  famous,  prose  writers,  without  so 
seriously  impairing  them  that  any  but  a  very  few 
delicate  ears  would  perceive  the  difference.  So 
precise  a  person  as  Matthew  Arnold  misquotes 
Keats's  "Pure  ablution  round  Earth's  human 
shores"  as  "cold  ablution"  without  a  blush  and 
under  circumstances  that  called  for  great  accu- 
racy (Maurice  de  Guerin,  in  Essays  in  Criticism). 
Stevenson,  himself  a  devotee  of  the  theory  of 
the  fine  phrase,  is  quite  right  in  saying  that  "per- 
fect sentences  are  rare  and  perfect  pages  rarer." 
This  necessarily  brief  description  of  the  Eng- 
lish language  will  not  be  complete  for  the  purpose 
of  sketching  the  bases  of  the  study  of  composition 
without  the  mention  of  another  fact  that  is 
common  to  all  languages.  An  inherent  condi- 
tion for  expression  in  any  language  is  progression. 
When  a  thing  has  to  be  said  it  has  to  be  said  by 
words,  and  these  words  have  to  follow  one 
another.  When  we  read,  we  have  to  take  in 
ideas  piecemeal;  we  cannot  see  a  whole  pro- 
duction at  a  glance,  but  have  to  take  time  to 
listen  or  to  read.  The  rate  may  be  fifty  words 
a  minute  to  five  hundred,  according  to  one's 
skill  in  "reading  short."  In  any  event  meaning 
is  conveyed  by  a  series  of  approximations;  and, 
whether  we  think  about  the  matter  or  not,  we 
are,  in  all  literary  composition,  bound  to  be  pro- 
gressives. On  this  fact  of  progression  —  of 
progression  from  word  to  word,  from  sentence  to 
sentence,  from  paragraph  to  paragraph  —  must 


16         WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

necessarily  be  founded  any  rational  notion  of 
written  composition. 

But,  besides  these  facts  of  language  that  have 
been  recited,  there  are  other  conditions  that  go 
with  the  act  of  writing,  and  on  them  also  rhetoric 
must  be  based.  Conditions  is  a  much  better  word 
to  use  than  principles  or  laws,  words  formerly 
and  often  still  much  in  vogue.  Such  words  are 
very  impressive;  but,  to  speak  in  simple  truth, 
there  are  no  laws  of  style  or  composition,  in  any 
strict  sense,  and  the  principles  are,  for  the  most 
part,  chiefly  conveniences.  "Conditions  of 
writing"  is  a  much  more  intelligible  phrase  to 
found  a  theory  of  composition  on  than  is  "laws 
of  style."  Of  this  some  more  will  be  said  later 
in  the  chapter;  what  is  meant  by  the  term  "con- 
ditions" may  now  be  illustrated  by  saying  that 
the  great  condition  of  all  communication,  written 
or  spoken,  is  intelligibility.  Language  also  exists 
that  we  may  unburden  our  minds  in  our  own 
behalf,  whence,  among  many  other  things, 
poetry  and  profanity;  and  it  is  also  a  condition 
of  communication  that  we  put  a  good  foot  for- 
ward, that,  in  short,  we  try  to  be  as  interesting 
as  possible.  It  is  of  certain  developments  of 
these  conditions  that  we  have  to  speak. 

These  conditions  result  from  the  fact  that  lan- 
guage is  the  great  means  of  communication,  that 
its  method  is  progressive,  and  that,  wilful  decep- 
tion aside,  we  ordinarily  try  to  make  ourselves 
as  intelligible  and  as  interesting  as  we  may.  To 


ENGLISH  COMPOSITION  17 

be  clear,  a  writer  should  surely  know  his  facts, 
or,  in  other  words,  what  he  wishes  to  say;  he 
should  think  in  an  orderly  way  about  them;  and 
he  should  use  words  and  sentences  that  his  read- 
ers will  understand.  Interest,  too,  implies  several 
conditions,  and  there  are  also  conditions  arising 
from  the  act  of  writing  and  publication.  The 
formal  study  of  English  composition  does  not 
bear  equally  on  all  these  matters;  some  will  be 
treated  at  greater  length  in  the  following  chapters, 
but  the  more  important  may  be  briefly  mentioned 
at  this  point.  They  are  not  technical  but  very 
human  matters. 

Unless  a  writer  conforms  to  the  condition  of 
knowing  his  facts,  his  own  mind,  or  what  he 
wishes  to  say,  he  is  likely  to  fall  into  all  kinds  of 
vagueness,  obscurity,  and  error.  That  is  what 
we  have  in  mind  when  we  use  such  terms  as 
"clear-headed"  or  "confused"  or  "muddle- 
minded."  Now  this  general  statement  implies 
several  other  things  that  help  to  describe  the 
act  of  writing.  Facts  to  be  expressed  may  be 
matters  of  observation,  of  record,  of  information; 
that  is  to  say,  a  man  may  write  about  what  he 
sees,  or  reads,  or  is  told.  They  may  be  com- 
ments and  reactions  on  these  things;  hence 
argument,  criticism,  bickering,  anger,  exegesis, 
opinions,  and  many  other  marks  of  the  independ- 
ent mind.  They  may  also  be  matters  of  imagina- 
tion, which  supplies  us  with  our  novels,  our  poetry, 
end  most  of  our  entertainment.  If  the  facts  are 


18         WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

those  of  observation,  clear  expression  calls  for  a 
noting  of  the  phenomena  as  accurately  and  defi- 
nitely as  is  possible.  If  a  writer  is  repeating 
things  that  have  been  told  him,  conformity  to 
what  has  been  told  him  may  be  all  that  is  required : 
an  elaborate  procedure  has  been  devised  in  law, 
for  example,  simply  to  extract  truth,  and  hence 
clearness  of  fact.  In  dealing  with  records,  that  is 
with  literature,  or  facts  that  are  beyond  the 
reach  of  observation  and  hearsay,  a  writer,  to  be 
clear,  to  know  what  he  wishes  to  say,  has  evi- 
dently to  look  up  facts  where  they  are  to  be 
found,  —  in  libraries,  in  newspaper  files,  in  learned 
reports,  and  other  mausoleums  where  their 
visible  shell  is  laid  away.  Of  comments  and 
reactions,  agreements  and  disagreements,  the 
more  precisely  a  writer  knows  his  own  mind  the 
clearer  his  expression  is  likely  to  be.  Here  again, 
however,  he  is  likely  to  arrive  at  clearer  results 
if  he  checks  his  immediate  personal  reactions  by 
some  regard  for  fact,  justice,  and  logic.  Such 
checking,  indeed,  always  goes  on  in  some  way;  it 
may  be  thorough,  casual,  conscientious,  tem- 
peramental, stubborn,  or  what  not,  even  though 
the  writer  never  heard  formally  of  justice,  logic, 
or  English  composition.  Clearness  is,  in  a  sense, 
truth.  The  human  aspect  of  the  matter  is  this,  — 
that  whereas  a  writer  may  banish  into  outer 
darkness  all  facts  and  observations  not  imme- 
diately apparent  to  him,  the  better  part  is  to  try 
to  nurse  the  tender  suggestion  and  clarify  the 


ENGLISH  COMPOSITION  19 

vague  concept,  to  appropriate  facts  with  free 
hand.  The  common  charge  brought  by  English 
critics  against  Macaulay,  that  he  dealt  with  the 
immediately  apparent,  is  an  illustration  of  the 
growing  notion  that  the  kind  of  clearness  that  is 
obtained  by  exclusions  is  not  of  so  high  an  order 
as  that  which  comes  from  meeting  and  thinking 
out  any  difficulty  that  may  arise.  Important 
as  is  this  matter,  it  cannot  be  further  treated  in 
the  present  book. 

A  fitter  subject  for  detailed  study  is  the  con- 
dition of  order,  to  which  a  good  deal  of  time  is 
actually  given  in  the  formal  study  of  composi- 
tion. In  general,  order  simply  means  that, 
whatever  the  facts,  some  arrangement  of  them  is 
necessary,  if  for  no  other  reason  than  to  do  them 
justice.  Conditions  of  time,  space,  and  language 
prevent  things  from  being  thought  of  or  said  or 
written  all  at  once.  Nobody,  even  if  he  has 
never  heard  tell  of  the  matter,  likes  topsy-turvy 
construction,  that  mark  of  the  untrained  mind. 
Even  if  our  ideas  come  pell-mell,  they  have  to  be 
recast  for  human  consumption;  otherwise  we 
may  get  intellectual  indigestion  or  spiritual 
strangulation.  Ideas  do,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
spring  from  one  another,  are  associated  with 
and  suggested  by  one  another;  a  natural  condi- 
tion of  writing  is  to  follow  their  lead.  The  formal 
study  of  English  composition  utilizes  this  natural 
sense  for  progression;  it  attempts  to  show  how 
progression  may  be  trimmed  and  confined,  how  it 


20         WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

may  be  expanded  and  modified,  how  unnecessary 
water  may  be  squeezed  out,  how  the  inexpert 
swimmer  may  escape  the  backwash  and  the  eddy. 
Another  condition  of  nearly  all  writing  is 
some  regard  for  the  capacity  or  the  state  of  mind 
of  the  reader.  This  means  several  things.  In 
the  first  place  a  writer  is  obliged  to  use  a  common 
coin  of  ideas  and  words;  he  is  likely  to  think  in 
terms  and  at  least  to  start  from  ideas  that  a 
reader  will  understand.  Few  things  are  more 
distressingly  funny  to  one  who  knows  anything 
about  the  English  language  than  to  see  the 
efforts  made  by  certain  misguided  amateurs  to 
get  away  from  common  words  and  to  use  odd 
and  antic  expressions.  Again,  no  writer  is  likely 
to  tell  all  he  knows  in  any  one  instance;  he  says 
as  much  as  is  necessary  at  the  time  or  as  comes 
to  him  to  say.  Nor  do  you  have  to  be  a  Sunday- 
school  superintendent  to  speak  to  babes  and 
sucklings  in  different  terms  from  what  you 
would  use  about  your  business.  It  is  the  amuse- 
ment of  some  people  to  fancy  that  we  should 
always  write  to  the  "average  intelligent  reader," 
or  in  such  a  way  that  anybody  will  understand 
us  without  previous  training.  It  is  true  that  the 
great  mass  of  writing  must  be  made  up  of  ideas 
of  ordinary  quality  and  must  be  expressed  in 
plain,  intelligible  English  words.  But,  aside 
from  the  fact  that  the  "average  intelligent 
reader"  is  a  figment,  we  do  almost  always  write 
for  particular  people;  for  particular  readers  as 


ENGLISH  COMPOSITION  21 

represented  in  the  subscribers  for  the  paper  or 
the  pew;  or  for  our  own  amusement  and  grati- 
fication. If  we  were  always  obliged  to  write  for 
the  "average"  mind,  there  would  evidently  be 
very  little  verse,  or  technical  writing,  or  scholarly 
production.  Obviously  the  formal  study  of 
English  composition  can  tell  you  very  little 
about  audiences,  which  are  nearly  always  par- 
ticular, except  to  adjure  you  not  to  bore  them  or 
insult  them,  or  otherwise  to  act  in  an  inhuman 
manner  toward  them. 

Hence  arises  a  curious  paradox,  that  writing  to 
be  clear,  to  do  its  duty  of  communication,  has 
largely  to  deal  with  the  unknown.  The  remark 
is  true  whether  writing  be  looked  at  as  the  adding 
of  material  to  the  extant  body  of  literature  or  as 
the  act  of  addressing  a  reader  or  a  group.  The 
reader  of  your  letter,  of  your  description,  your 
novel,  your  lecture,  does  not  want  to  be  told 
what  he  knows  already;  he  will  usually  skip  what 
is  familiar  to  him,  unless  said  in  a  highly  inter- 
esting and  alluring  way  or  with  new  decorations 
of  thought,  originality,  and  style.  We  go  to 
encyclopedias,  cook-books,  volumes  of  the  Home 
University  Library  for  information  that  we 
hadn't  before,  or,  what  amounts  to  the  same 
thing,  for  the  refreshment  of  our  memory  or  for 
new  light.  We  read  novels,  essays,  poems,  and 
other  works  of  so-called  literary  art,  because  they 
are  specifically  different  from  one  another  and 
not  precisely  like  anything  else  that  was  ever 


M         WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

said,  however  much  they  may  be  alike  in  general 
form,  "note,"  and  type.  The  idea  of  plagiarism 
is  based  on  the  principle  that  writings  should  be 
new  in  notion  or  style,  or  should  be  made  for  a 
new  audience.  We  are  nearly  all  Athenians  in 
our  desire  "to  hear  or  to  tell  some  new  thing." 

Exceptions  to  these  remarks  are  more  apparent 
than  real.  Even  that  large  class  of  readers,  as  of 
listeners,  for  example,  that  love  to  bask  in  the 
sunshine  of  daily  denunciation,  by  their  chosen 
sheet,  of  the  doings,  character,  and  measures  of 
political  opponents,  like  to  be  treated  to  a  new 
set  of  adjectives  of  anathema.  The  ideas  may 
appear  as  "eternal  truths,"  as  that  the  "Demo- 
cratic party  is  the  enemy  of  the  Republic,"  or 
that  the  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  is  destroy- 
ing the  English  Constitution,  or  that  the  Ger- 
mans are  taking  away  our  trade,  or  that  America 
should  be  for  the  Americans,  or  that  Messrs. 
John  J.  McGraw  and  C.  B.  Fry  are  the  greatest 
exponents  of  certain  branches  of  sport  that 
ever  were;  but  we  like  to  have  the  phraseology 
varied  from  day  to  day.  Hence  arises  the  lively 
or  the  solemn  journalistic  style.  It  is  of  course 
necessary  to  repeat  commands,  often  many 
times,  to  get  them  through  the  inattentive  or 
obtuse  head,  to  convey  information  at  all.  But 
even  the  classical  instance,  "Sire,  remember  the 
Athenians,"  is  not  of  sufficient  weight  to  upset 
the  general  fact  that  writing  as  a  specific  process 
must  deal  chiefly  with  new  things.  Even  our 


ENGLISH  COMPOSITION  23 

old  and  favorite  books  we  read  to  get  anew  into 
an  unfamiliar  world.  We  must  then  regard  the 
aim  of  the  writing  that  is  actually  going  on  at 
any  time  to  be  the  communication  of  information, 
of  interesting  facts,  feelings,  impressions,  beliefs, 
ideas,  problems,  etc.,  to  readers  who  are,  or  are 
imagined  to  be,  not  wholly  familiar  with  these 
things. 

Formal  English  composition  cannot  help  you 
very  much  in  getting  new  things;  it  can  merely 
point  out  the  necessity.  Nor  can  it  tell  you  much 
about  new  points  of  view,  which  are  the  material 
of  special  departments  of  human  activities;  or 
of  new  tricks  of  style,  which  are  the  emanations 
of  cheap  or  of  gifted  minds.  There  is  no  rule 
for  original  expression.  The  general  condition 
of  interest,  however,  suggests  several  interesting 
conditions  of  writing  that  may  be  spoken  of. 
Interest  manifests  itself  in  many  ways;  it  is 
commonly  called  the  emotional  side  of  writing 
as  opposed  to  the  intellectual  side,  which  calls 
for  clearness.  It  is,  however,  simpler  to  say  that 
interest  is  whatever  makes  us  read  things  that 
we  don't  have  to  read  for  information  or  under 
compulsion.  The  condition  of  interest  is  inherent 
in  human  nature.  The  most  conscientious 
reader  or  the  most  devoted  writer  is  apt  to  strike 
when  he  is  bored.  Dullness  is  often  thought  to 
be  the  worst  of  defects,  and  the  problem  of  writ- 
ing in  an  interesting  way  is  an  even  greater 
human  problem  than  making  it  clear,  in  propor- 


24          WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

tion  as  dullness  is  more  grievous  than  obscurity. 
Now  a  writer  is  not  likely  to  be  interesting  if  his 
ideas  are  hazy,  if  he  doesn't  know  his  facts,  if  he 
is  uncertain  of  his  own  mind;  if,  in  short,  he  is 
tongue-tied  at  the  start.  Though  it  is  evident 
that  many  of  the  most  compelling  and  influential 
of  writings  cannot  be  outlined  or  restated  in 
exact  terms,  interest  must  usually  depend  on 
clearness  of  thought,  of  arrangement,  of  expression. 
With  interest,  as  with  clearness,  custom  and 
convention  come  to  one's  aid  with  a  great  array 
of  topics  that  are  perennially  enthralling.  Thus 
parents  are  usually  interested  in  the  doings  of 
their  children,  wishing  to  hear  about  them  or  to 
proclaim  them;  the  details  of  a  man's  business 
and  its  proper  conduct  supply  by  the  thousand 
examples  of  those  interests  that  are  scorned  in 
literature  as  commercial;  certain  classes  of  read- 
ers are  always  eager  to  hear  the  tales  of  undying, 
misguided,  or  mistaken  love  supplied  by  news- 
papers and  novels;  we  assume  that  our  friends 
will  listen  to  our  tale  of  weal  or  woe;  we  rejoice 
in  reading  of  war,  prize-fighting,  politics,  panics, 
fires,  strikes,  explosions,  executions,  murders, 
cricket,  baseball,  the  Derby,  the  general  election, 
the  Inauguration  ball,  the  opening  of  Parlia- 
ment, and  the  millions  of  ready-made  interests, 
where  procedure  is  prepared  and  the  audience 
expectant.  All  of  these  may  supply  occasions 
for  composition;  the  point  is  that  the  writer 
is  met  half-way  by  things  that  people  like  to 


ENGLISH  COMPOSITION  25 

hear  about.  Knowledge  of  the  interests  of  men 
is  one  side  of  the  matter,  is  a  great  condition  of 
writing.  Hence  arise  professional  purveyors  to 
these  interests,  of  various  descriptions,  —  liter- 
ary hacks,  journalists,  men  of  letters,  preachers, 
orators,  and  many  other  very  useful  members  of 
the  community. 

However  much  a  writer  may  use  the  common 
vehicles  of  communication  or  may  study  the 
interests  of  his  readers,  it  is  probable  that  the 
great  natural  basis  for  interesting  communica- 
tion is  the  condition  that  one  should  be  inter- 
ested in  what  one  is  saying.  That,  indeed,  may 
beget  a  bore,  but  it  is  also  probably  the  frame 
of  mind  of  all  who  have  succeeded  in  making 
literature  or  in  moving  audiences,  as  also  of  any 
one  who  has  done  his  business  well,  or  has  written 
good  letters  or  books  of  travel,  or  has  entertained 
theories  or  courted  facts  of  any  kind.  To  have 
enthusiasm  does  not  necessarily  mean  that  one 
should  lie  awake  nights  or,  school-girlishly,  be 
filled  with  thoughts  that  threaten  to  explode  in 
ecstasy.  It  is  more  likely  to  mean  a  reasonable 
concern  for  some  subject  and  a  willingness  to 
take  some  time  and  thought  to  say  what  has  to  be 
said  about  it.  In  great  pieces  of  literature  it 
means  much  more  than  this. 

We  have  seen  that  any  specific  act  of  writing 
usually  is  the  threefold  process  of  planning, 
writing,  and  revision.  Each  of  these  acts  may 
be  very  simple  and  casual,  or,  at  the  other  extreme, 


26         WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

may  demand  much  preparation  and  pains.  Hence 
there  is  an  interesting  condition,  of  a  more 
mechanical  kind  than  those  before  mentioned, 
that  is  imposed  by  the  difference  between  spoken 
and  written  language.  Omitting  any  profound 
considerations  of  the  origin  of  speech  and  the 
written  alphabet,  we  can  readily  see  that  the 
publication  of  ideas  —  and  they  have  no  signi- 
ficance until  published  in  some  form  —  is  differ- 
ent in  speaking  and  in  writing.  By  publi- 
cation, of  course,  is  meant  the  promulgation 
or  presentation  of  any  idea  whatever  to  the  per- 
son or  persons  for  whom  it  is  intended.  Now  the 
structure  of  speech  is  ordinarily  loose,  though 
not  invariably  so;  that  is  to  say,  we  proceed, 
except  in  prepared  speeches,  by  a  series  of  ap- 
proximations, of  parts  and  fragments  of  a  mass 
of  ideas,  and  we  revise  and  clarify  our  ideas  by 
successive  additions,  modifications,  limitations, 
restatements,  and  retractions  —  often  with  much 
backing  and  filling,  in  short  —  during  the  act  of 
publication.  Writing  may  also  do  this;  but  any 
piece  of  written  work,  though  open  to  subse- 
quent modification,  is  naturally  complete  before 
the  act  of  publication.  Hence  all  written  composi- 
tion, before  falling  under  the  eye  of  the  reader, 
may  have  as  much  rearrangement  and  revision 
as  the  writer  may  care  to  bestow.  This  condi- 
tion is  all  in  favor  of  written  composition,  and  that 
is  probably  why  writing  may  go  to  greater  degrees 
of  fineness  than  speaking.  Other  differences 


ENGLISH  COMPOSITION  27 

between  writing  and  speaking,  such  as  perma- 
nence of  record  and  possibility  of  wide  diffusion, 
have  little  to  do  with  composition  as  composition, 
—  except  that  they  suggest  the  desirability  of 
being  careful  with  expression  if  words  are  to  be 
coldly  read  rather  than  heard  in  the  heat  of  the 
moment. 

Here,  then,  are  some  of  the  more  important 
conditions  —  of  language,  of  communication,  of 
clearness,  of  interest,  of  opportunity  —  with 
which  any  act  of  writing  is  beset.  Call  them 
laws,  if  you  will;  but  it  is  sounder  to  regard 
them  as  facts  on  which  formal  instruction  in  the 
writing  must  be  based. 


Formal  English  composition,  like  all  other 
studies,  sports  an  aim  or  purpose.  That  may  be 
described  as  the  giving  of  something  that  will 
enable  any  student  of  the  subject  to  better  his 
own  writing  or  any  piece  of  writing  that  he  may 
wish  to  improve.  Any  knowledge  that  you  have 
of  anything  may  help  you  to  do  this;  and  hence, 
more  specifically,  knowledge  of  English  com- 
position more  commonly  means  knowledge  of 
spelling,  punctuation,  forms  of  address,  capitali- 
zation, grammar,  theories  of  style,  good  and  bad 
English,  the  art,  so  called,  of  the  short  story,  of 
versification,  of  cross-examination,  and  any 
other  of  those  many  subjects  having  to  do  with 
expression  on  which  there  are  very  many  books 


28         WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

and  pamphlets.  It  is  sometimes  made  to  include 
anything  whatever  that  has  any  connection  with 
form  and  expression;  it  is  even  made  to  include 
the  collection  of  facts  and  the  handling  of  those 
facts  which  are  the  special  province  of  special 
sciences  and  arts. 

Evidently  a  general  book  like  the  present  can- 
not touch  on  all  these  matters;  as  we  have  seen, 
not  all  the  conditions  of  writing  can  be  equally 
well  subjected  to  formal  treatment.  A  general 
book  on  English  composition  is  really  a  working 
description  of  the  English  language  for  the  pur- 
poses of  composition;  it  attempts  to  find  some 
definition  and  to  make  some  exposition  of  the 
term  "  well  written  "  or  "  good  writing,"  to  the  end 
that  anybody  may  apply  for  himself  to  his  own 
writing  the  knowledge  there  presented. 

The  task  has  never  been  an  easy  one.  "Well 
written"  is  evidently  one  of  those  results  better 
recognized  in  the  breach  than  the  observance;  or, 
if  positively  recognized,  it  is  better  known  by 
means  of  specific  examples  —  as  when  we  praise 
the  rhythm  of  Ruskin  or  the  paragraphs  of 
Macaulay,  —  than  in  those  more  general  out- 
lines which  have  to  make  up  the  bulk  of  inclu- 
sive treatises.  It  is  doubtful  whether  any  active 
process  can  be  reduced  to  statement  of  an  exact 
and  final  sort;  and  this  remark  is  specially  just 
of  so  common  an  act  as  writing.  If  writing  is,  as 
we  have  seen,  continually  dealing  with  new 
things,  if  much  of  its  value  for  readers  lies  in 


ENGLISH  COMPOSITION  29 

freshness  of  manner,  if  not  of  idea,  how  in  partic- 
ular can  rules  and  principles  be  laid  down  for 
this  aspect  of  the  matter;  for  between  rule  and 
unexpectedness  there  is  a  contradiction  in  terms? 

But  most  of  us  would  rather  go  without  our 
dinner  than  admit  that  we  could  not  recognize 
a  thing  as  well  written.  Natural  as  is  this  com- 
mon claim  to  the  rights  of  criticism  of  something 
in  which,  like  government,  or  religion,  or  oppor- 
tunity, we  all  have  rights,  there  is  little  consensus 
of  popular  opinion  as  to  the  meaning  of  the  term 
"well  written."  We  squint  at  it.  Thus,  popu- 
larly, if  a  number  of  persons  were  called  upon 
independently  to  express  an  opinion  as  to  whether 
certain  pieces  were  well  written  or  not,  the  find- 
ings might  readily  vary  from  one  instinct  with 
concern  for  the  Constitution  to  one  that  foresaw 
the  advent  of  a  second  Burke  or  a  greater  Webster; 
from  one  that  found  ultimate  cause  for  disap- 
proval in  the  writer's  use  of  the  "cleft"  infinitive, 
to  one  enthusiastic  over  a  worthy  addition  to 
the  great  trinity  of  clever  modern  writers.  Noth- 
ing is  commoner  than  these  diversities  of  factual 
and  stylistic  judgment,  even  among  trained  men. 
The  diversity  arises  partly  because  other  con- 
siderations—  political,  religious,  "interested," 
favorite,  and  many  others  —  are  confused  with 
the  quasi-technical  term  "well  written";  fact, 
as  is  often  inevitable,  being  confounded  with  the 
expression  thereof.  It  also  arises  partly  because 
commentators  are  likely  to  take  a  limited  view 


30          WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

of  the  matter,  and  are  specially  susceptible 
to  certain  phenomena,  —  spelling,  say,  or  gram- 
mar, or  good  "lines,"  or  structure,  or  precision 
and  cadence.  Every  man,  woman,  and  child 
who  ever  reads  anything  probably  sets  up,  more 
or  less  unconsciously,  some  sort  of  measure,  if 
merely  that  of  amusement,  in  which  will  be 
found  his  notion  of  good  writing.  What  is  com- 
mon to  all  these  notions?  How  may  the  common 
notions  be  gathered  into  a  vade-mecum  of  fact 
and  precept  to  be  applied  to  any  act  of  real 
writing,  which  from  the  nature  of  the  act  is  some- 
thing of  a  leap  into  the  future  and  the  dark? 

It  may  be  doubted  whether  any  one  thing  is 
common  to  all  these  views  and  is,  at  the  same 
time,  inclusive.  Certainly  there  is  no  one  test  of 
good  writing,  except  that  it  does  its  work.  Good 
writing  is  surely  more  than  rhetorical  ornamen- 
tation, that  "artificial  beautifier,"  or  than  con- 
formity to  literary  usage,  or  observance  of  the 
prevailing  fashion,  in  say,  wording  and  cadence, 
or  the  successful  search  for  more  mysterious 
manifestations  of  "style,"  valuable  as  these 
things  often  are  and  much  as  they  have  from 
time  to  time  figured  in  pursuit  of  the  essence  of 
expression.  The  trouble,  in  application,  of  any 
of  these  standards  is  that  they  may  not  be  at  all 
to  the  point;  it  may,  for  example,  be,  on  occasion, 
a  very  good  thing  to  write  like  some  recognized 
master  of  style,  Arnold,  say,  or  Newman;  but,  on 
another  occasion,  very  foolish  to  try  to  do  so. 


ENGLISH  COMPOSITION  31 

Nor  is  that  other  side  of  the  pursuit,  the  hunt 
for  common  principles,  very  much  more  useful; 
principles,  rules,  and  laws  to  be  of  practical  value 
have  also  to  be  specifically  applicable;  "be  your 
self,"  "proper  words  in  proper  places,"  and  other 
phrases  of  good  advice  get  you  nowhere,  unless 
you  know  precisely  how  to  apply  them.  The 
famous  dictum  of  Spencer's  that  the  test  of  style 
is  the  "economy  of  the  reader's  attention"  is 
perhaps  the  most  comprehensive  that  we  have 
on  this  subject,  but  this,  even  so,  calls  for  knowl- 
edge and  experience  in  its  application. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  all  our  fancied  "laws"  of 
writing  —  the  laws  of  the  short  story,  of  the 
drama,  of  the  sentence,  of  the  paragraph,  of 
letter-writing  (how  absurd  the  last  seems  to  be!) 
—  are  of  very  little  practical  value.  An  English 
writer,  G.  H.  Lewes,  once  attempted  in  a  series  of 
essays  to  formulate  the  laws  of  style;  but  they 
would  go  very  little  way  toward  quelling  lin- 
guistic riot.  We  may  as  well  make  up  our 
minds  at  the  outset  that  no  laws  of  writing,  at 
once  so  general  as  to  be  abiding  stays  and  so 
special  as  to  be  of  any  use  in  writing,  have  yet 
been  formulated.  What  we  have  are  the  general 
aims  of  communication,  and  we  also  have  the 
facts  of  language  and  the  conventions,  customs, 
and  conveniences  that  we  have  to  employ  when 
it  comes  to  communicating  ideas.  It  is  much 
sounder  to  speak  of  these  things  than  of  laws, 
rules,  and  principles;  and  we  must  also  recog- 


32          WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

nize  the  plain  fact  that  words,  customs,  conven- 
tions, and  conveniences  are  constantly  being  dis- 
carded and  new  ones  coming  to  birth,  and  that 
writers,  even  so,  are  doing  very  much  as  they 
like.  A  writer  is  limited,  not  by  rules,  laws,  and 
precepts  of  writing  and  of  style,  but  by  condi- 
tions; that  is,  as  we  have  seen,  by  his  ideas,  his 
audience,  and  the  character  of  the  language. 
The  more  he  knows  about  these  the  better  he  will 
.write.  In  a  practical  sense  the  study  of  rhe- 
toric is  a  study  of  the  conveniences  of  compo- 
sition. 

Thus,  when  you  go  to  the  New  English  Dic- 
tionary to  assure  yourself  of  the  most  usual 
modern  meaning  of  a  word  that  you  have  em- 
ployed or  would  like  to  employ,  you  go  to  the 
greatest  of  the  modern  storehouses  of  conven- 
iences of  composition.  A  "don't"  book,  adjuring 
you  to  avoid  any  of  the  thousand  expressions 
"commonly  misused,"  lists,  rightly  or  wrongly, 
some  of  the  convenient  things  of  composition;  as, 
in  like  manner,  do  spellers,  grammars,  and  punc- 
tuation books.  The  so-called  principles  of  com- 
position are  useful  only  because  they  are  some- 
times conveniences  of  a  more  general  sort.  The 
application  of  the  word  "principles"  to  composi- 
tion is  pretty  loose;  we  have  not  quite  got  over 
the  early-Victorian  habit  of  giving  the  name 
"principle  of  composition"  to  such  things  as 
sincerity,  truthfulness,  candor,  respect,  venera- 
tion, and  various  other  of  the  seven,  ten,  twoscore, 


ENGLISH  COMPOSITION  33 

or  five  hundred  "lamps"  of  writing.  The  present 
tendency  is,  however,  to  use  the  word  "princi- 
ples" in  a  technical  rather  than  a  moral  sense. 
Thus  unity,  coherence,  and  emphasis  are  the 
group  names  for  certain  specific  points  that  you 
may  well  keep  your  eye  open  for  when  you  read 
or  write.  They  are  useful  in  so  far  as  they  serve 
to  divide  the  aim  of  writing  among  several  speci- 
fic targets.  They  are  convenient  in  that  they 
enable  a  writer  to  localize  a  point  of  view  or  to 
look  at  a  product  in  the  specific  way  that  may 
be  most  handy.  They  act  like  a  plumber  or  a 
doctor,  who,  from  long  experience,  can  at  once 
lay  hands  on  the  stopped  pipe  or  the  strained 
joint.  Looked  at  in  this  way,  a  generalization 
like  the  "economy  of  the  reader's  attention" 
gains  point  in  actual  composition,  though  value- 
less without  the  skill  of  specific  application  to 
specific  words  and  sentences. 

The  same  splitting  of  aim,  or  breaking  of  fagots, 
or  whatever  else  you  choose  to  call  it,  occurs  when, 
as  is  common  practice  in  general  books  on  com- 
position, we  have  to  treat  of  wording,  of  senten- 
ces, of  paragraphs,  and  the  like  matters  as 
separate  things,  to  be  handled  and  analyzed 
piecemeal.  Actually,  these  matters  cannot  be 
separated  in  any  such  way  as  the  exigencies 
of  exposition  demand.  The  "cinematograph" 
method,  as  Professor  McDougall  calls  it  (Psy- 
chology, chap.  2),  has  to  be  applied  to  a  flowing 
act. 


34         WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

In  brief,  the  major  fact  on  which  the  formal 
study  of  English  composition  must  be  based  is 
this :  that  no  one  criterion  of  good  writing  can  be 
found,  that  there  can  be  no  ultimate  accord  in 
the  common  views  or  the  expert  opinions  of  the 
matter.  Any  piece  of  literary  work  may  be 
excellent  in  spots  and  inferior  in  others;  readers 
in  different  localities  may  rightly  set  different 
values  on  the  more  strictly  technical  results  of 
actual  writing.  Good  writing  appears,  not  as  a 
ponderous  engine  of  literary  judgment  or  a  series 
of  rules,  but  now  as  unity,  now  as  clearness,  now 
as  interest,  now  as  correctness,  now  as  observance 
of  certain  conventions,  now  as  speaking  your 
own  mind,  now  as  making  your  business  clear, 
now  as  properly  accepting  an  invitation  to  dine, 
now  as  sound  wording,  now  as  clever  sayings, 
now  as  individual  style,  now  and  again  as  a 
great  many  other  things.  Well  written  is  to  be 
defined  by  a  series  of  as's,  to  the  number  of  which 
additions  are  constantly  being  made  through  the 
discovery  of  new  points  of  view;  and  members 
are  also  continually  falling  from  the  ranks  with 
the  changes  of  language  and  stylistic  theory.  In 
any  given  case  only  a  few  of  the  criteria  are  likely 
to  be  applicable;  what  we  know  of  the  others  we 
place  in  cold  storage  for  the  fitting  occasion. 
That  is  the  way  rhetorical  criticism  actually 
works. 

The  foregoing  view  may  be  illustrated  and 
enforced  by  a  brief  description  of  the  way  addi- 


ENGLISH  COMPOSITION  35 

tions  are  made  to  our  practical  knowledge  of 
composition,  —  aside,  that  is,  from  the  knowledge 
of  the  meaning  of  specific  words  and  of  grammat- 
ical constructions.  When  anybody  makes  a 
remark  on  the  arrangement  or  style  of  any  piece 
of  writing,  —  as,  for  example,  "situation  not 
clear,"  or  "illiterate,"  or  "this  sentence  has 
excellent  unity,"  —  the  special  case  may  stick  in 
his  mind  as  the  type  and  example  of  a  more  or 
less  general  defect  or  excellence.  Thus  a  curtly 
put  letter  may  remain  in  my  mind  not  only  as  an 
example  of  particular  things  to  be  avoided,  but 
also  as  an  instance  of  a  more  general  inconven- 
ience that  should  be  shunned.  Hence  I  am  more 
on  my  guard  against  resemblances  to  the  fault, 
and  I  may  be  able  to  formulate  some  excel- 
lent general  advice  on  the  subject,  illustrated  by 
pregnant  examples.  So  also  of  good  things:  the 
specific  excellence  I  may  be  able  to  generalize 
into  a  fine  principle  of  procedure  in  writing.  The 
multiplication  of  principles  of  composition  is 
theoretically  limited  only  by  the  ingenuity  of 
the  human  mind. 

The  facts  stated  in  the  preceding  part  of  the 
chapter  make  quite  evident  several  things  about 
any  formal  treatise  on  English  composition.  In 
the  first  place,  such  a  book  as  the  present  can  be 
nothing  more  than  a  digest  of  the  more  important 
conveniences  of  composition  that  have  been  dis- 
covered and  explained.  The  more  important  are 


36          WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

those  that,  after  centuries  of  rhetorical  study, 
have  come  to  be  regarded  as  the  more  important. 
Our  modern  knowledge  of  composition  is  as  much 
a  growth  and  a  result  of  actual  experiment  as 
anything  else  in  the  world.  If,  for  example,  we 
incline  to  disregard  the  learned  and  elaborate 
lists  of  figures  of  speech  which  are  a  considerable 
part  of  such  books  as  Bain's  Rhetoric  or  hesi- 
tate to  spend  much  time  over  the  more  intri- 
cate and  individual  matters  of  style,  la  vraie  verite, 
the  unique  word,  the  inevitable  phrase,  and  other 
delicious  things,  —  it  is  because  we  recognize 
that  such  matters  are  less  near  and  tangible  than 
others. 

It  is  evident  also  that  —  since  formal  knowledge 
does  not  quite  keep  up  with  the  facts  of  practice, 
and  since,  except  in  the  actual  meanings  of  partic- 
ular words,  theory  only  roughly  coincides  with 
practice  —  books  on  English  composition  are 
merely  illustrative  points,  or  points  d'appui,  or 
entering  wedges,  or  neat  levers  of  various  sizes, 
wherewith  the  writer  or  the  critic  may  pry  away 
the  baser  parts  of  written  work.  For,  if  writing 
is  a  process  of  planning,  of  writing,  and  of  revision, 
formal  English  composition  is  assuredly  a  tinkerer. 
In  other  words,  when  we  come  to  the  application 
of  general  rhetorical  knowledge  to  actual  writing 
we  find  that  we  are  usually  concerned  with  details 
and  excrescences.  All  the  erudition  that  has  been 
garnered  into  various  volumes  appears,  on  reflec- 
tion, to  be  but  something  flitting  about  the 


ENGLISH  COMPOSITION  37 

edges  of  discourse,  —  adjusting  detail  here  and 
there,  correcting  a  misused  or  a  misspelled  word, 
cutting  out  a  clumsy  or  inaccurate  phrase,  telling 
us  how  to  conform  in  trifles.  One  of  the  reasons 
why  formal  English  composition  sometimes 
seems  to  be  of  little  effect  in  training,  is  because 
our  formal  theories  are  often  contending  against 
the  great  common  mother  tongue  and  are  sure 
to  get  the  worst  of  the  argument,  reinforced,  as 
is  our  actual  practice,  by  the  habits  of  impres- 
sionable years. 

The  following  chapters  deal,  in  a  necessarily 
incomplete  way,  with  the  more  important  facts 
and  the  more  important  points  to  which  it  is 
usually  agreed  the  attention  of  the  student  or  the 
writer  may  profitably  be  directed.  The  virtue 
of  any  such  presentation  of  facts  lies  in  the  possi- 
bility of  its  application  to  specific  acts  of  writing. 
The  bulk  of  the  space  in  this  book  is  about  equally 
divided  between  composition,  or  the  arrangement 
of  material,  and  what  for  want  of  a  better  term 
may  be  called  style,  that  is,  words  combined  into 
sentences.  A  final  chapter  or  two  is  given  to 
special  matters. 

So  far  as  any  theory  may  be  said  to  underlie 
the  following  presentation  of  facts  it  is  this:  that 
the  aim  of  any  study  of  English  composition  is  to 
aid  the  student  in  gaining  for  specific  productions 
of  his  own  —  whether  they  be  letters,  or  stories, 
or  sermons,  or  any  other  kind  of  written  prose  — 
the  maximum  of  meaning  and  of  interest  possible 


38         WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

in  any  given  case.  This  maximum  appears  in  a 
negative  way  as  correctness;  that  is,  as  the  re- 
moval of  the  ordinary  impediments  to  clear  and 
interesting  discourse.  In  a  more  positive  way  it 
appears  as  movement;  if  language  is  progressive 
in  structure,  the  prime  virtue  of  expression  in 
language  is  the  most  powerful  movement  that  is 
consistent  with  clearness.  Whether  movement 
be  thought  of  as  a  going  from  word  to  word,  from 
sentence  to  sentence,  from  paragraph  to  para- 
graph; or  as  narrative  order,  or  logical  arrange- 
ment, or  as  any  one  of  those  types  of  progression 
that  we  shall  have  to  examine  in  the  following 
chapters,  —  the  indispensable  quality  of  any 
writing  is  that  it  shall  not  cease  to  add  things  to 
itself  and  to  us.  The  more  smoothly,  rapidly, 
directly,  economically,  pleasureably,  forcibly, 
weightily,  humorously,  as  the  case  may  be,  the 
better;  but  all  these  fine  things  are  really  but 
various  aspects  of  the  movement  of  prose.  Prose, 
like  life,  has  to  keep  a-going. 


CHAPTER  II 

GOOD   WHITING  AS   COMPOSITION 

COMPOSITION  in  literature  is  simply  the  art 
or  the  act  of  arranging  the  facts  to  be  expressed 
in  such  a  way  as  to  bring  out  what  is  important; 
its  object  is  to  make  clear  or  impressive  the 
point  or  effect  of  any  piece  of  writing.  Order  is, 
as  we  have  seen,  fundamental  to  good  composi- 
tion; but  whatever  means  may  serve  to  make 
meaning  clearer,  to  throw  important  facts  into 
greater  relief  or  to  make  them  more  interesting, 
belongs  to  the  subject.  In  any  event,  literary 
composition,  whether  simple  or  intricate,  depends 
on  the  structure  of  language:  that  is  to  say,  it  is 
essentially  a  method  of  progression,  of  accumu- 
lation, of  piecing  out  idea  with  idea,  of  adding 
fact  to  fact. 

This  idea  of  progression  we  commonly  conven- 
tionalize by  saying  that  any  piece  of  writing  — 
or  any  form  of  expression,  like  musical  composi- 
tion, having  to  do  with  time  —  has  a  beginning, 
a  middle  or  body,  and  an  ending.  Now  facts  are 
of  very  various  kinds  and  have  various  relations 
to  one  another.  The  study  of  composition,  or, 
to  speak  more  exactly,  the  study  of  arrangement 
39 


40         WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

in  composition,  is  therefore  the  study  of  the  means 
by  which  various  kinds  of  material  may  be  fitted 
into  the  mold  of  beginning,  middle,  and  ending. 

The  raw  material  does  not  usually  square  with 
this  mold.  The  beginning  of  any  piece  of  writing 
is  an  act  of  isolation,  or  sequestration,  or  segre- 
gation, or  corralling,  or  rounding-up.  A  story- 
teller, for  example,  begins  by  isolating  certain 
facts  of  the  many  that  he  may  know  or  that  may 
come  into  his  head;  of  these  he  makes  a  situation. 
Such  isolation  is  even  more  evident  in  the  drama. 
But  description,  exposition,  and  argumentation 
also  cull  out  facts:  few  writers  tell  us  all  they 
know,  and  all  that  even  some  of  them  know  is  but 
a  tiny  part  of  what  might  be  said.  Composition 
is  an  act  of  limitation  or  confinement.  The  liter- 
ary process  is  compelled  to  isolate  things,  to 
snatch  and  carry  away  various  small  parts  of  the 
mass  of  facts,  or  to  dam  up  little  pools  and  lead 
off  rivulets  from  the  stream  of  events  and  con- 
sciousness. Or,  to  change  the  figure,  both  the 
active  processes  and  the  growing  corpus  of 
writing  may  be  thought  of  as  a  great  variety  of 
outgrowths  from  the  common  stock  of  objects 
and  current  ideas;  and  these  outgrowths  reach 
more  or  less  deeply  into  the  unknown,  just  as 
little  polyps  or  branch  fish-lines  protrude  and 
depend  from  the  parent  coral  or  the  main  trawl 
to  catch  nourishment  in  unknown  waters. 

The  beginning  of  a  piece  is  the  dam,  the  stem 
of  the  polyp,  the  knot  of  the  fish-line.  "In  plain, 


GOOD  WRITING  AS  COMPOSITION    41 

unvarnished  speech,"  the  question  of  beginning 
comes  down,  in  nearly  all  cases,  to  finding  some 
point  of  departure.  The  matter  is  most  simply 
illustrated  in  letters.  What  your  correspondent 
has  said  offers  an  opening,  often  conventionalized 
into  such  phrases  as,  "In  answer  to  your  recent 
letter,  I  beg  leave  to  say,"  or,  more  anciently, 
"I  take  my  pen  in  hand."  Where  a  previous 
letter  offers  no  such  opportunity,  the  point  of 
departure  may  be  had  in  various  ways,  —  by  the 
assumption  of  common  interests,  common  friend- 
ship, mutual  advantage  in  business,  a  reasonable 
wish  for  information  or  aid.  The  handy  fact  is 
seized.  Hence  the  exceeding  great  joy  of  the 
weather,  of  politics,  of  the  latest  novel,  of  the 
Balkan  war,  as  "openers"  in  talk.  Again,  the 
text  from  the  Bible,  at  the  head  of  the  sermon; 
the  skilful  reference  in  the  leader  to  the  recent 
happenings  in  local  or  national  politics;  the 
graceful  allusion,  in  the  literary  essay,  to  a  story 
of  one's  childhood,  to  the  practice  of  great  men 
of  letters,  to  opposing  schools  of  thought,  —  all 
these  are  also  examples  of  points  of  departure, 
and  they  assume  common  and  often  conventional 
interests.  A  student  may  profitably  examine, 
from  this  point  of  view,  any  of  the  thousands  of 
competent  essays,  leaders,  sermons,  and  treatises 
in  the  English  language,  to  see  how  they  are 
yoked  to  the  body  of  current  ideas  and  interests. 
Elaborated  points  of  departure  are  something 
of  a  refinement  in  modern  composition.  Mon- 


42          WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

taigne,  Bacon,  and  other  eminent  men,  did  not 
fear  to  jump  straight  at  the  subject,  trusting  the 
reader  to  knot  their  discourse  to  the  common 
line  of  thought  —  or  not  to  make  any  connection 
whatever.  Even  as  late  as  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury we  find  Jeffrey  saying  of  Wordsworth's  Ex- 
cursion: "  This  will  never  do !  "  and  Macaulay, 
without  formal  preliminaries  "  purposing  to  write 
a  history  of  England."  Why  the  more  suave 
and  explicit  method  has  tended  to  succeed  the 
more  robust  and  direct  manner,  —  whether  due, 
for  example,  to  the  influence  of  Hegel,  or  to  our 
modern  idea  of  growth  and  relationship,  or  to 
pressure  of  scientific  classification,  or  to  com- 
parative ease  in  producing  copy,  or  to  Evolution, 
or  to  fear,  convenience,  habit,  convention,  or 
what  not,  —  is  an  interesting  question  which  this 
book  is  not  concerned  to  elucidate. 

Special  forms  of  beginning  call  for  a  word. 
Thus  it  is  not  uncommon  to  speak  of  the  purpose 
of  the  author  and  the  importance  of  the  subject, 
as  does  Mill  in  his  tracts  On  Liberty  and  The 
Subjection  of  Women,  as  also  in  his  Autobiog- 
raphy. It  is  happily  less  usual  for  writers,  like 
Oriental  dragomans,  to  speak  of  their  surpassing 
and  exclusive  competence,  or,  assuming  an 
attitude  of  modesty  and  astonishment,  to  apolo- 
gize for  their  humble  and  ill-worded  but  well- 
meant  efforts,  or  to  counterfeit  amazement  that 
a  perfectly  plain  meaning  should  be  misunder- 
stood. Unless  a  subject  is  really  important,  can 


GOOD  WRITING  AS  COMPOSITION    43 

be  nailed,  so  to  speak,  to  some  real  human  need 
or  interest,  it  may  better  be  let  take  care  of  it- 
self: it  is  better  to  make  it  interesting  than  to 
label  it  "vital,  with  care."  Factitious  interests 
are  easy  to  conjure  up  but  are  seldom  convincing. 
And  in  like  manner  it  is  probably  best  to  have 
one's  eye  on  the  subject,  to  strive  for  suitable 
presentation  of  facts,  letting  modesty  and  com- 
petence appear  as  by-products. 

The  beginning  of  a  piece  of  writing  is  perhaps 
best  studied  in  the  separate  and  formal  intro- 
ductions, by  the  author  or  by  some  friendly 
hand,  which  not  infrequently  lend  grace  and 
authority  to  books.  Such  introductions,  by 
speaking  of  the  subject  with  which  the  book 
deals,  aim  to  show  its  connection  with  more 
general  and  common  knowledge.  This  formal 
act  of  describing  the  relation  of  the  particular 
book  to  the  more  general  subject,  may  evi- 
dently be  critical,  or  commendatory,  or  bio- 
graphical, or  anything  else  that  the  writer  may 
think  proper.  Strictly  speaking,  these  intro- 
ductions are  themselves  complete  compositions, 
though  their  function  is  that  of  a  host,  a  middle- 
man, or  a  promoter.  A  study  of  opening  senten- 
ces and  paragraphs  is  also  good. 

The  beginnings  of  stories,  of  plays,  and  certain 
other  forms  of  literary  art  would  seem,  at  first 
glance,  to  fall  without  the  observations  that  have 
been  made.  But  the  exceptions  are  more  ap- 
parent than  real.  Good  novels  and  dramas 


44         WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

present  opening  situations  of  an  unstable  sort; 
these  are  the  premises,  or  primary  assumptions, 
and  they  may  evidently  be  about  any  kind  of 
thing  within  the  range  of  experience.  Repre- 
senting a  conflict  of  desires  or  prospective  diffi- 
culties to  be  overcome,  the  novel  and  the  drama 
develop  from  this  exposition  toward  a  stable 
situation,  wading,  it  may  be,  "through  slaughter 
to  a  throne."  Such  points  of  departure  being 
knit  closely  into  the  fabric,  it  is  very  hard  —  as 
well  as,  usually,  very  academic  and  arbitrary  — 
to  say  what  is  the  beginning  and  what  is  the  rest. 
In  like  manner,  points  of  departure  in  other  forms 
of  literature  —  poems,  epigrams,  jests,  etc.  — 
may  be  analyzed,  the  objective  being  the  way 
in  which  a  piece  of  writing  is  made  to  connect 
with  ideas  outside  itself. 

From  this  last  clause  the  great  and  by  no  means 
uncommon  structural  fault  of  introductions  will 
be  apparent.  It  is  characteristic  of  many  ser- 
mons, for  example,  that  any  moral  could  be 
drawn  from  the  introduction  or  expanded  text,  or 
that  the  moral  could  be  fitted  to  any  introduc- 
tion; so  that  a  clever  preacher  with,  say,  ten 
introductions  and  ten  morals  could  make  one 
hundred  sermons.  If  an  introduction  does  not 
introduce,  if  it  does  not  let  the  subject  go  into 
the  hands  of  the  reader  naturally,  it  is  evidently 
bad.  A  not  unusual  fault  in  amateur  writing  is 
the  beginning  that  leaves  the  subject  standing 
speechless,  like  strangers  before  an  awkward 


GOOD  WRITING  AS  COMPOSITION    45 

host,  or  that  ties  up  good  material,  or  that  com- 
pels a  reader  to  beat  a  retreat  from  a  structural 
cul-de-sac  and  essay  some  easier  mode  of  entrance 
to  an  idea.  Too  much  mention  of  modesty,  of 
competence,  of  importance  of  the  subject,  too 
many  flourishes  at  the  beginning  of  a  letter, 
reduce  themselves  to  this  objection;  for  there 
may  be  as  little  real  connection  between  the 
possible  noise  of  an  introduction  and  the  real 
importance  of  the  subject  as  between  the  ass  and 
the  lion's  skin  of  the  fable.  As  in  that  classical 
instance,  sensible  people  will  not  long  be  im- 
posed on.  This  is  the  human  side  of  a  technical 
matter,  —  that  it  is  unwise  to  promise  more  in 
an  introduction  than  can  be  carried  out  in  the 
text. 

Since  progression  is,  as  we  have  seen,  the  in- 
herent condition  of  all  writing,  the  study  of  the 
so-called  middle  or  development  of  a  composition, 
is  essentially  the  examination  of  various  ways  of 
progression  and  the  application  of  whatever 
method  seems  to  be  most  suitable  for  the  facts 
and  the  occasion.  How  shall  the  writer  arrange 
his  ideas?  That  is  the  question.  The  answer 
obviously  depends  on  the  specific  facts  to  be 
arranged,  but  several  types  of  order  do  exist 
and  may  be  analyzed. 

The  commonest  of  all  these  is  order  in  time. 
Things  happen  in  succession  or  are  to  be  done 
one  after  another;  the  natural  act  is  to  arrange 


46          WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

them  as  they  occur.  The  method  is  applicable  to 
any  narrative  of  past  events:  thus  there  are  let- 
ters of  travel,  Xenophon's  Anabasis,  the  Book  oj 
Chronicles,  The  Personal  Memoirs  of  Ulysses  S. 
Grant,  With  Kitchener  to  Khartum,  and  the  news 
in  the  daily  press.  This  is  also  the  common 
method  applicable  to  history,  but  the  quality  of 
specific  pieces  may  evidently  be  vastly  different. 

The  method  is  capable  of  many  refinements. 
Events,  for  example,  that  follow  each  other  in 
time  may  be  conceived  as  having  a  causal  rela- 
tion also;  and  here  it  is  natural  for  a  statement  of 
causes  to  precede  that  of  the  effects.  Story- 
tellers, to-day  more  than  in  earlier  times,  are 
likely  to  imagine  events  as  a  series  of  relation- 
ships, or  of  situations  which  beget  other  situa- 
tions, physical,  mental,  and  spiritual;  the  novels 
of  George  Eliot  will  occur  to  any  one  as  an  exam- 
ple. So  history  tends  to  assume  this  form,  and 
it  is  not  unknown  in  familiar  letters.  It  is  but 
another  way  of  saying  that  we  recognize  or  devise 
a  new  set  of  facts,  the  facts  of  relationship,  which 
we  cannot  afford  to  ignore.  The  more  primitive 
form  of  arrangement  in  order  of  time  may  be 
imagined  as  any  answer  to  the  question,  "What 
happened?"  The  refinements  more  evidently  fit 
the  questions,  "Why  did  it  happen?"  or  "How 
did  it  happen?"  As  we  shall  see  a  little  later 
this  temporal  method  is  applicable  to  processes 
as  well  as  to  happenings. 

But  a  great  many  facts  do  not  have  any  such 


GOOD  WRITING  AS  COMPOSITION    47 

relation  to  each  other  in  terms  of  time,  or,  if 
the  temporal  idea  appears,  it  is  incidental.  Thus, 
a  great  many  things  of  a  tangible  sort  are  related 
to  each  other  by  position,  as,  for  example,  the 
rooms  of  a  house  or  the  features  of  the  field  of 
Gettysburg.  Evidently  a  set  of  drawings  or  a 
relief  map  is  better  than  description  for  making 
such  matters  clear,  though  a  skilful  description 
may  drive  the  plan  home.  Many  ideas,  however, 
are  of  such  a  kind  that  no  plan  can  be  made: 
all  general  ideas  and  all  abstractions  are  of  this 
nature,  in  that  they  can  neither  be  definitely 
measured  or  because  they  are  so  commonly  true 
as  to  be  capable  of  illustration  only  in  specific 
instances.  The  subject  of  this  book,  for  example, 
does  not  readily  lend  itself  to  picturing,  nor  can 
we  draught  a  plan  of  the  present  status  of,  say, 
labor  unrest  in  England.  Of  such  general  mat- 
ters diagrams  are  indeed  sometimes  made,  as, 
humorously,  in  Mr.  Wells's  The  Food  of  the 
Gods,  or,  solemnly,  in  Professor  Moulton's 
Shakespeare  as  a  Dramatic  Artist;  but  such 
plans  are  merely  suggestive.  The  main  point  is 
that  we  have  to  recognize  large  bodies  of  fact 
related  by  position  or  status,  and  here  the 
essential  progression  of  language  compels  a 
seriatim  enumeration,  more  or  less  complete,  of 
the  various  aspects  of  the  object  or  the  idea.  As 
the  former  was  called  progression  in  order  of 
time,  so  this  might  be  called  progression  by  enu- 
meration. 


48         WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

As  with  the  former,  so  this  type  also  is  actually 
much  modified.  There  are  recurrent  facts,  and 
the  recurrence  may  be  in  uniform  order.  Such 
is  the  condition  of  all  processes,  as  the  making 
of  shoes,  or  gunpowder,  or  sailing  on  a  Cunarder 
from  New  York  to  Liverpool.  The  same  set  of 
acts  will  be  performed,  with  incidental  differ- 
ences, whether  they  have  happened,  or  are  now 
taking  place,  or  are  to  be  done.  Typical  repre- 
sentatives of  this  class  of  facts  are  cook-books, 
rules  for  tennis,  parliamentary  procedure,  scien- 
tific formulas,  descriptions  of  the  habits  of  ants, 
of  the  symptoms  and  treatment  of  typhoid,  the 
vade-mecums  of  Bradshaw,  Murray,  Baedecker 
and  Company.  In  other  words,  you  enumerate 
till  the  body  of  facts  is  as  completely  presented 
as  you  wish,  but  the  enumeration  follows  a  tem- 
poral order,  often  combined  with  an  arrangement 
based  on  the  actual  juxtaposition  of  objects. 

As  with  events,  these  enumerations  may  be 
thought  of  as  causal  or  logical.  The  causal 
order  of  the  enumerative  process  is  easy  to  under- 
stand: a  certain  state  or  condition  is  the  result 
of  antecedent  situations  and  conditions  and  will 
lead  to  further  conditions,  so  that  our  progres- 
sion may  take  the  form  of  looking  back  to  a  pre- 
vious condition  or  looking  forward  by  way  of 
prophecy.  The  political  unrest  —  a  status  — 
in  England  and  America  is  due  to  certain  con- 
ditions past  and^present;  and  it  will  lead  to  differ- 
ent arrangements,  blessed  or  horrible,  or  some- 


GOOD  WRITING  AS  COMPOSITION    49 

thing  else,  according  to  the  views  of  the  writer. 
In  this  respect  the  method  of  enumeration 
very  largely  coincides  with  the  causal-temporal 
method  described  above,  though  likely  to  appear 
in  prophecy  as  well  as  history  and  to  be 
applied  to  generalizations  rather  than  to  specific 
facts. 

Logical  enumeration  is  not  quite  so  easy  to 
understand,  or,  at  its  best,  quite  so  common,  but 
since  we  hear  a  good  deal  about  logic  in  composi- 
tion, and  shall  hear  more  in  Chapter  IV,  a  word 
may  be  said  regarding  it.  In  logical  enumera- 
tion, there  is  no  necessary  antecedent  causal  or 
temporal  relation,  though  these  may  often  be 
found.  What  happens  typically  is  either  (1)  that 
because  a  particular  thing  or  a  number  of  par- 
ticular things  are  true  something  else  of  a  differ- 
ent and  more  general  sort  is  also  true  at  the 
same  time,  or  (2)  that  because  a  general  fact  is 
true  certain  particular  facts  are  true;  and  all 
this  quite  apart  from  actual  observation  of  the 
derived  facts.  All  of  us  are  constantly  making 
inferences  and  deductions  from  what  we  see  and 
read.  Most  of  these  are  probably  pretty  com- 
monplace, as  that  the  smoothness  of  the  sea 
betokens  a  lack  of  wind,  or  that  the  rise  of  the 
thermometer  suggests  the  need  of  a  straw  hat; 
or  they  may  not  correspond  to  the  exact  demands 
of  formal  logic;  or  the  facts  may  be  improperly 
applied  to  one  another.  With  these  matters 
we  are  not  at  present  concerned.  For  the  pur- 


50         WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

poses  of  composition,  we  merely  have  to  recog- 
nize the  existence  of  a  great  number  of  things  in 
logical  relationship,  rather  than  in  temporal  or  tan- 
gible positions,  or  as  steps  in  a  process,  or  as  con- 
ditions. These  logical  relationships  have  to  be 
enumerated  from  premise  to  conclusion  or  from 
conclusion  to  premise,  or  from  facts  to  infer- 
ence, or  from  general  to  particular. 

Doubtless  other  refinements  and  modifica- 
/  tions  suggest  themselves,  but  it  is  easy  to  recog- 
nize these  two  great  types  of  progression,  —  one 
in  time,  the  other  by  the  division  of  facts  or 
ideas  into  component  parts  of  any  suitable  kind 
and  the  arrangement  of  these  parts  in  some  order 
or  enumeration  not  primarily  temporal.  Books 
like  Boswell's  Johnson  and  Gibbon's  Decline 
and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire  employ  the  first 
on  a  large  scale;  The  Origin  of  Species  and  The 
American  Commonwealth  use  the  second.  Similar 
methods  are  found  even  in  very  slight  work  — 
letters,  reviews,  reports,  and  the  like.  Actually 
the  methods  are  not  pure  and  exclusive,  any 
more  than  are  any  other  literary  distinctions 
when  applied  to  the  actual  writing.  The  first, 
however,  is  very  convenient  when  possible, 
since  it  is  perhaps  a  little  closer  to  the  movement 
of  language.  Both  methods  are  commonly 
employed  in  the  presentation  of  bodies  of  fact 
or  of  ideas,  be  they  few  or  many,  simple  or  com- 
plex. Thus  Gibbon  mainly  presents  us  with 
the  facts  of  the  decline  and  fall,  and  Mr.  Bryce 


GOOD  WRITING  AS  COMPOSITION    51 

corrals  whatever  important  observations  he  has 
gathered  about  the  American  commonwealth. 

There  is,  however,  of  facts  and  ideas  another 
aspect  which  appears  when  the  material  is  se- 
lected and  trained  toward  a  particular  end. 
Keeping  in  mind  our  general  types,  we  may  say 
that  certain  facts  or  observations  or  objects  or 
ideas  may  be  so  selected  as  to  bear  on  particular 
ideas  or  feelings.  Two  interesting  types  of  pro- 
gression —  further  refinements,  if  you  will,  of 
the  main  types  —  may  be  called  composition  by 
thesis  and  composition  by  prevailing  mood.  So 
far  as  these  methods  differ  from  the  preceding  it 
is  in  this:  that  not  all  the  facts  in  a  subject  or  a 
large  or  small  body  of  interesting  facts  are  ranged 
one  after  another,  until  the  facts  as  facts  are 
sufficiently  aired,  but  that  specially  selected 
facts  are  made  to  illustrate  and  enforce  special 
ideas  and  modes.  On  the  central  idea  the  facts 
are,  so  to  speak,  strung  in  the  most  effective  and 
enticing  order.  Let  us  make  the  distinction,  so 
far  as  there  is  any  distinction,  clear.  In  the 
former  main  types,  whatever  important  ideas  are 
judged  to  go  with  a  subject,  be  it  big  or  little,  — 
and  always  within  the  limits  of  practical  publi- 
cation, —  may  be  presented  by  time  or  by  division 
into  groups;  the  method  is  accumulative.  We 
wish  to  know  the  main  facts  about  Johnson  or 
the  American  people,  or  the  fall  of  Rome,  or  the 
geography  of  England,  or  bread-making,  or 
parliamentary  debate,  or  French  watering-places, 


52         WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

of  what  is  going  on  in  the  world  to-day.  We 
do  not  for  the  time  being  call  for  special  inter- 
pretation of  these  facts.  The  facts  are  the  main 
thing.  But  in  the  specialized  types,  the  inter- 
pretation of  fact  becomes  the  main  thing.  The 
former  attitude  is,  generally,  scientific,  ency- 
clopedic, and  journalistic;  the  latter,  literary, 
political,  theological,  polemic,  personal,  or  what 
not. 

Composition  by  thesis  is  a  very  common  act. 
It  is  evidently  characteristic  of  all  persuasive 
writing  and  of  nearly  all  special  writing,  —  of 
sermons,  leaders,  book  reviews,  essays,  speeches, 
and  letters  of  reproof,  exhortation,  and  command. 
Admirable  examples  abound  in  the  writings  of 
Matthew  Arnold,  in  Mill's  The  Subjection  of 
Women,  in  the  series  of  articles  on  the  labor 
unrest  appearing  recently  in  the  Daily  Mail,  in 
the  discussions  of  the  Spectator,  the  Saturday 
Review,  and  the  New  York  Nation,  in  the  works 
of  Messrs.  Wells,  Shaw,  Belloc,  Bennett,  Ches- 
terton, and  others.  Thesis  composition  is  for 
the  writer,  at  least,  the  most  entertaining  of 
serious  literary  sports.  Nothing  is  more  agree- 
able than  to  have  views;  nothing  so  flattering 
as  to  think  that  these  views  have  vogue.  A 
danger  arises  from  the  exclusiveness  of  the 
method:  some  important  bits  of  evidence  may 
possibly  be  overlooked  and  the  thesis  may  not 
square  with  all  the  facts  obtainable.  Hence 
writers  of  a  scientific  or  judicial  turn  are  likely  to 


GOOD  WRITING  AS  COMPOSITION    53 

be  shy  of  theses,  contenting  themselves  with 
statements  of  fact  and  venturing  interpretation 
only  when  the  evidence  points  to  an  unmis- 
takable conclusion.  But  thesis-writing,  conjoined 
with  lively  expression,  is  a  great  engine  for 
arousing  and  stimulating  us,  and  we  could  not  do 
without  it,  any  more  than  we  could  do  without 
the  writers  who  have  been  named.  It  is  quite 
as  likely  to  be  an  imaginative  as  a  reasoning  act. 
The  thesis  may  be  stated  as  a  premise  or  as  a 
conclusion,  or  may  run  through  the  whole  dis- 
course. Structurally,  the  thesis  is  the  fork  or 
spit  which  toasts  the  facts  before  the  fire  of 
genius. 

Composition  by  prevailing  mood  or  dominant 
tone,  or  by  any  other  name  that  impresses  the 
reader  as  standing  for  a  recognizable  fact  of 
composition,  is  common  enough  in  description  and 
narration.  Such  facts  are  selected  from  the  body 
of  objects  or  of  happenings  as  will  bring  a  cer- 
tain impression  to  the  fore.  An  "atmosphere," 
as  is  very  frequently  said,  is  thereby  created, 
and  the  main  point  of  the  entire  composition  may 
lie  simply  in  this  atmosphere  or  prevailing  im- 
pression, rather  than  in  the  facts  themselves  or  in 
any  body  of  ideas  that  a  serious  reader  might 
be  disposed  to  extract.  Classical  instances  of 
this  kind  of  composition  are  Poe's  Ligeia,  The 
Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher,  The  Masque  of  the  Red 
Death,  Lamb's  The  South  Sea  House  and  Mrs. 
Battle's  Opinions  on  Whist,  De  Quincey's  The 


54         WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

English  Mail  Coach  and  Suspiria  de  Profundis; 
but  a  reader  may  with  quite  as  much  profit  turn 
for  examples  to  some  of  the  later  novels  of  Mr. 
Henry  James,  —  In  a  Cage,  for  example,  The 
Sacred  Fount,  and  The  Great  Good  Place,  —  to 
some  of  the  scenes  in  Mr.  Hardy's  Tess  and  The 
Return  of  the  Native,  to  Turgenieff's  Annals  of  a 
Sportsman  and  Smoke.  Most  works  of  this 
character  cannot  be  reduced  to  a  set  of  facts  or 
the  statement  of  a  single  thesis,  and  he  who 
would  that  all  writing  should  "point  a  moral 
and  adorn  a  tale,"  would  miss  much  that  is  very 
good  in  literature.  In  composition  of  this  kind 
the  point  is  diffused  through  the  substance  of 
the  story  or  the  picture,  and  cannot  be  had  by 
any  bare  summary. 

Any  usefulness  that  the  preceding  analysis  of 
types  in  composition  may  have,  lies  chiefly  in 
the  help  that  it  may  afford  in  determining  ques- 
tions of  goodness  and  badness.  Compositions 
may  be  good  or  bad,  still  standing  under  any  one 
of  these  loosely  separated  types;  but  questions 
of  quality  are  more  satisfactorily  settled  if  the 
general  kind  of  composition,  that  is,  its  purpose 
and  its  facts,  is  recognized.  Before  entering  upon 
this  discussion,  however,  it  will  further  matters 
to  look  for  a  moment  at  the  process  of  composi- 
tion as  (1)  a  matter  of  classification  of  facts, 
and  (2)  as  the  ensuing  arrangement  of  groups  or 
divisions  in  the  most  effective  order.  Broadly, 
composition  is  nothing  more  or  less  than  this. 


GOOD  WRITING  AS  COMPOSITION    55 

Classification  and  division  are  somewhat  for- 
midable words,  and  the  notion  is  somehow  prev- 
alent that  they  are  the  property  of  science  and 
logic,  that  to  classify  is  an  act  of  extreme  intel- 
lectual skill  of  which  the  ordinary  man  should 
be  shy.  Doubtless  it  can  be  made  so;  but  it  is 
more  reasonable  to  regard  classification  and 
logic  as  among  the  very  common  acts  or  things 
of  the  universe,  which  we  cannot  avoid  any  more 
than  we  can  avoid  sleepiness  or  hunger.  For 
example,  the  simple  direction  that  we  give  an 
errant  stranger,  "walk  that  way  for  three  blocks 
and  then  take  the  cross-town  car,"  simply  classi- 
fies and  groups  several  prospective  acts.  Thus 
railway  time-tables,  guide-books,  recipes,  theater 
programs,  our  daily  routine,  and  almost  every 
familiar  thing,  are  built  on  and  may  appear  to 
us  as  the  classification  of  certain  kinds  of  phe- 
nomena. If  you  turn  to  the  essays  and  novels 
cited  in  the  foregoing  pages  you  will  find  that 
each  is  built  upon  some  scheme  of  classification, 
and  that  ensuing  groups  of  facts,  ideas,  opinions, 
notions,  imaginings,  and  impressions  result. 
Composition  is  essentially  classification,  and  the 
resulting  groups  may  be  arranged  in  order  of 
time,  or  by  juxtaposition,  or  in  about  any  way 
that  seems  good.  If  any  doubt  lingers  as  to 
the  pervasiveness  of  classification  in  all  litera- 
ture, the  obvious  fact  may  be  reinforced  by 
the  authority  of  no  less  a  man  than  Plato, 
who  in  the  Phcedrus  causes  Socrates  to  say  by 


56          WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

way  of  his  last  word  on  the  subject  (Jowett's 
translation) : 

"Until  a  man  knows  the  truth  of  the  several 
particulars  of  which  he  is  writing  or  speaking, 
and  is  able  to  define  them  as  they  are,  and  having 
defined  them  again  to  divide  them  until  they  can 
be  no  longer  divided,  and  until  in  like  manner 
he  is  able  to  discern  the  nature  of  the  soul,  and 
discover  the  different  modes  of  discourse  which 
are  adapted  to  different  natures,  and  to  arrange 
and  dispose  them  in  such  a  way  that  the  simple 
form  of  speech  may  be  addressed  to  the  simpler 
nature,  and  the  complex  and  composite  to  the 
more  complex  nature  —  until  he  has  accomplished 
all  this,  he  will  be  unable  to  handle  arguments 
according  to  the  rules  of  art,  as  far  as  their  nature 
allows  them  to  be  subjected  to  art,  either  for  the 
purpose  of  teaching  or  persuading;  —  such  is  the 
view  which  is  implied  in  the  whole  preceding 
argument." 

That  classification  at  once  suggests  science 
and  logic  is  probably  for  the  reason  that  here,  as 
often  elsewhere,  a  common  human  act  is  appro- 
priated, elaborated,  and  formalized  to  meet 
specifically  exact  needs;  but  there  were  kings 
before  Agamemnon.  The  logical  requirements 
of  classification  are  (1)  that  the  resulting  divisions 
should  embrace  all  the  facts  to  be  presented; 
(2)  that  the  dividing  should  be  made  from  one 
point  of  view  until  all  the  facts  have  been  con- 
tained; and  (3)  that  the  groups  should  be  mu- 


GOOD  WRITING  AS  COMPOSITION    57 

tually  exclusive.  Doubtless  these  three  rules 
were  desirable  in  all  matters,  but,  in  actual 
relations,  only  the  first  can  be  applied  with  any 
strictness;  this  rule  means,  in  practice,  that  you 
should  say  all  that  you  think  necessary  to  say 
on  the  subject.  Even  in  science,  too  great  an 
insistence  on  these  rules  sets  students  by  the 
ears  over  profitless  questions,  as  whether  a 
particular  object  is  a  species  or  a  variety  —  a 
matter  *  ordinarily  of  no  interest  to  the  object, 
unless  he  is  being  tried  for  some  degree  of  mur- 
der, and  usually  of  very  little  benefit  to  man- 
kind. In  less  formal  matters,  that  is,  in  our 
more  usual  daily,  intellectual,  and  literary  con- 
cerns, we  rarely  use  logical  rules,  or,  to  put  the 
matter  differently,  (1)  we  use  as  many  facts  or 
ideas  as  we  have  or  can  think  of  or  as  are  neces- 
sary to  our  purpose;  (2)  we  do  not  by  any  means 
group  our  facts  from  one  constant  point  of  view, 
but  consciously  or  unconsciously  shift  our  ground 
as  we  see  fit,  such  flitting  being  not  infrequently 
the  life  of  discourse;  and  (3)  we  cannot  make 
the  divisions  mutually  exclusive  if  we  would. 
In  simpler  words,  we  classify  as  much  as  is  neces- 
sary for  our  purposes  and  from  the  point  of  view 
that  fits  the  point  of  departure.  If,  for  example, 
a  man  should  ask  me  about  football,  I  should 
be  at  a  loss  to  answer  until  I  could  guess  or  ask 
his  purpose.  If  he  wished  to  know  all  about  the 
game,  I  should  probably  refer  him  to  an  ency- 
clopedia of  sport,  or  to  a  book  of  rules,  or  to 


58         WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

some  erudite  person  like  Mr.  Walter  Camp  or 
Major  Philip  Trevor.  If,  having  a  son  in  mind, 
he  wished  to  know  of  the  dangers,  my  facts  would 
at  once  be  limited.  If  he  wished  my  advice  on 
the  game  as  a  spectacle,  I  should  probably  reply 
that  it  is  very  popular,  and  hence  might  be 
thought  interesting;  but  that  in  my  own  opinion 
no  more  stupid  sight,  unless  it  be  cricket  or  bull- 
fighting, has  been  devised  for  the  amusement  of 
men.  A  great  many  other  answers  could  be 
made,  but  in  all  cases  the  division  would  depend 
on  the  purpose.  One  has  merely  to  try  to  classify 
games,  or  poems,  or  travel  routes,  or  ordinary 
food  and  clothing,  to  see  at  once  how  common 
is  classification  and  how  difficult  is  any  compre- 
hensive handling  of  the  matter  and  how  dependent 
on  the  immediate  purpose  is  any  grouping  of 
facts.  Scientific  classification  is  simply  more 
accurate,  comprehensive,  and  profound  than  our 
ordinary  use  of  the  great  device. 

Classification  is  most  readily  seen  in  the  con- 
ventional divisions  into  which  a  piece  of  writing 
of  any  length  is  ordinarily  split.  These  units  of 
composition,  as  they  may  be  called,  are  the 
sentence  and  the  paragraph  (so  common  and  so 
important  that  special  study  will  later  be  given 
to  them) ;  the  section,  usually  made  up  of  several 
paragraphs;  the  chapter,  often  a  matter  of 
several  sections;  the  book  or  part,  composed  of 
several  chapters;  parts,  in  turn,  may  make  up 
the  whole  treatise.  Not  all  books  have  all  these 


GOOD  WRITING  AS  COMPOSITION    59 

units;  they  are  more  common  in  expository 
work  than  in  narrative  fiction,  but  novelists 
like  George  Eliot  and  Mrs.  Ward  use  them.  It 
would  probably  be  more  accurate  to  conceive 
the  arrangement  of  material  the  other  way  round : 
first  by  books,  which  divide  into  parts,  chapters, 
sections,  paragraphs,  and  sentences,  of  which  the 
last  is  the  most  necessary.  Much  writing  does 
not  get  beyond  the  paragraph  stage.  If  now  we 
revert  to  our  earlier  analysis  of  progression,  we 
shall  see  that  the  act  of  composition  is  the  break- 
ing of  material  into  groups  and  sub-groups,  roughly 
represented  by  these  units  arranged  in  order. 

We  are  now  in  a  better  position  to  consider 
goodness  and  badness  in  composition.  Gen- 
erally we  may  say  that  whatever  arrangement  of 
the  units  of  composition  best  accords  with  the 
actual  relation  of  the  facts  to  one  another  has 
the  better  chances  of  success;  which  is  but 
another  way  of  recommending  straightforward 
style.  The  matter  will,  however,  be  clearer  if  we 
revert  for  a  moment  to  the  so-called  principles 
of  composition,  unity,  coherence,  and  emphasis. 
Unity  is  no  abstract  principle;  it  is  rather  know- 
ing in  any  particular  instance,  be  it  large  or  small, 
what  you  wish  to  say,  knowing  what  each  book, 
part,  chapter,  section,  and  paragraph  is  to  be 
about,  what  body  of  facts  is  to  be  conveyed  in 
each;  and  it  consists  also  in  making  these  matters 
clear  to  the  reader.  This  conception  of  unity  is 
important;  for  latterly,  in  our  eager  pressing 


60          WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

after  the  rules  of  art,  unity  is  sometimes  talked 
of  as  if  it  were  something  to  be  isolated  from  the 
specific  facts,  or  as  if  it  were  the  special  property 
of  certain  literary  forms,  of  which  the  short 
story  is  now-a-days  engaged  in  staking  out  a 
very  large  claim.  Unity  is  indeed  more  apparent 
in  a  closely  drawn  thesis  or  a  well-knit  tale  than 
in  many  a  longer  work,  but  that  may  be  merely 
because  the  shorter  pieces  may  be  more  compact, 
as  they  are  certainly  easier  to  grasp  as  a  whole. 
It  is  idle  and  academic,  however,  to  deny  unity 
to  longer  pieces,  say  BoswelPs  Johnson,  The 
Origin  of  Species,  The  American  Commonwealth, 
Middlemarch,  Vanity  Fair,  in  so  far  as  we  can 
see  what  they  are  driving  at  and  can  recognize  the 
bearing  of  details.  Doubtless  other  writers, 
treating  the  same  or  other  subjects,  would  have 
given  us  other  facts,  but  so  long  as  the  concep- 
tion is  clear  there  is  unity.  Unity,  therefore,  — 
to  speak  figuratively,  —  abhors  irrelevancy  and 
heterogeneity,  and  if  it  has  no  such  violent  ob- 
jection to  digressions,  it  insists  that  they  shall 
be  known  for  what  they  are,  and  that  they 
should  perhaps  not  be  so  numerous  or  so  lengthy 
as  to  obscure  the  progression  of  prose.  If  one 
is  so  disposed  he  might  debate  the  question  as 
to  the  unity  of,  say,  Swift's  A  Tale  of  a  Tub, 
Berkeley's  Siris>  or  Burton's  The  Anatomy  of 
Melancholy. 

This  is  the  negative  side.     More  positively, 
unity  may  be  thought  of  as  an  effort  at  concen- 


GOOD  WRITING  AS  COMPOSITION    61 

tration  and  intensity.  In  this  aspect  it  becomes 
specially  important  in  the  selective  types  of 
composition  spoken  of  a  few  paragraphs  back. 
That  is  to  say,  one  not  only  knows  his  mind,  but 
is  as  short  and  as  much  to  the  point  as  he  can  be; 
everything  that  is  not  a  positive  help  is  cut  out. 
This  conception  of  unity  reached  height  in  the 
venerable  and  still  recrudescent  conception  of 
the  famous  "three  unities"  of  the  drama,  the 
unities  of  time,  place,  and  action.  Mr.  Strachey 
has  a  good  word  to  say  on  this  subject  (Land- 
marks in  French  Literature,  pp.  94-95),  the  gist 
of  which,  for  our  purposes,  is  that  "Their  true 
importance  lies  simply  in  their  being  a  powerful 
means  towards  concentration.  Thus  it  is  clear 
that  in  an  absolute  sense  they  are  neither  good 
nor  bad;  their  goodness  or  badness  depends 
upon  the  kind  of  result  which  the  dramatist  is 
aiming  at."  That  is  to  say,  with  reference  to 
other  literary  forms  besides  the  drama,  whereas 
unity  is  first  making  clear  what  you  are  writing 
about,  it  is  also  a  positive  and  deliberate  restric- 
tion of  what  one  has  to  say  to  a  very  special 
purpose.  If  in  this  restriction  formal  rules  are 
a  help,  they  should  by  no  means  be  eschewed, 
but  to  make  Median  and  Persian  laws  of  them 
is  manifestly  absurd.  Habit  is,  of  course,  the 
great  counsellor,  and  hence  a  practised  letter- 
writer,  for  example,  not  only  knows  his  own 
mind  and  his  own  impressions,  but  is  also  likely 
to  bear  clearly  on  these  things.  For  discourse 


62         WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

may  have  unity  and  yet  may  be  inclined  to  sprawl, 
whereas  concentration  is  a  positive  safeguard 
against  irrelevance. 

A  good  deal  is  sometimes  said  about  what  is 
called  "unity  of  impression,"  or,  from  another 
point  of  view,  "unity  of  tone."  Unity  of  impres- 
sion means  about  the  same  thing  as  prevailing 
mood:  material  is  so  rendered  as  to  produce  a 
uniform  and  constant  effect.  From  the  reader's 
point  of  view  unity  of  impression  is  a  pretty 
variable  thing:  the  reader  with  the  greater 
powers  of  mental  and  physical  endurance,  — 
with  the  greater  command  over  sitting  still,  in 
short,  —  is  likely  to  attribute  unity  of  impres- 
sion to  longer  pieces  than  does  the  less  robust 
reader;  and  anybody  will  find  more  unity  in 
what  interests  than  in  what  bores  him.  Much 
of  our  current  literature  is  based  on  this  concep- 
tion of  unity,  and  especially  do  we  find  short 
stories  and  magazine  articles  conventionally 
calculated  to  occupy  the  idle  half-hour  of  the 
railway  trip  or  the  post-prandial  repose.  That 
many  admirable  articles  answer  this  call  of  civili- 
zation does  not  necessarily  alter  this  conception 
of  the  physical  basis  of  unity  of  impression.  One 
may  reasonably  quarrel,  however,  with  any 
such  notion  as  the  not  uncommon  one,  that 
because  unity  of  impression  is  more  evident  in 
such  short  pieces,  they  do  therefore  represent  a 
higher  form  of  art  than  longer  treatises  and 
three- volume  novels. 


GOOD  WRITING  AS  COMPOSITION    63 

Unity  of  tone  is  not  unlike  unity  of  impres- 
sion, but  it  means  the  presence  and  persistence 
in  any  writing  of  a  "dominant  note,"  as  of  joy, 
or  disaster,  or  impending  misfortune,  or  cheer- 
fulness, or  humor,  or  "pervasive  melancholy." 
It  is  sometimes  held  to  be  inartistic  for  a  piece 
of  writing  to  end  differently  from  its  opening 
premises,  just  as  it  is  assuredly  wrong  to  go 
beyond  one's  word  or  one's  evidence  in  logical 
and  practical  matters.  Thus  tragedy  calls  for 
such  situations  as  render  tragedy  possible,  and 
prefers  not  to  shift  from  comedy  to  disaster 
without  the  presaging  of  misfortune:  the  hero 
should  not  be  wounded  and  the  villain  should  not 
"get  off  with  the  swag,"  unless  the  antecedent 
situations  are  such  as  to  put  the  former  in  jeop- 
ardy and  the  latter  to  be  on  the  watch  for  alien 
and  detachable  property.  Stevenson  had  a  good 
deal  to  say  about  beginning  a  story  as  it  is 
to  be  ended,  and  his  better  novels,  like  Treasure 
Island,  Kidnapped,  and  The  Master  of  Ballantrce, 
are  good  illustrations  of  the  principle.  But  the 
principle  is  as  broadly  useful  as  artistic.  A  news- 
paper article  is  always  tragic,  or  "newsful," 
or  joyful,  or  what  not,  from  the  very  first  head- 
line which  announces  "Horrible  Disaster,"  or 
"Favorite  Beaten,"  or  "Great  Democratic 
Landslide."  A  leader  may  be  uniformly  contemp- 
tuous or  laudatory  in  tone  aside  from  the  facts 
to  be  specifically  presented.  Or  again,  we  often 
note  a  very  carefully  cultivated  uniformity  of 


64          WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

tone  among  certain  classes  of  people,  as  lawyers, 
soldiers,  university  men,  possibly  more  common 
in  older  than  in  more  recently  established  civili- 
zations. Unity  of  tone  is  a  widely  used  human 
engine  rather  than  a  special  adjunct  in  literary 
composition.  It  is  largely  a  matter  of  style,  of 
which  more  later,  and,  in  this  sense,  is  the  result 
of  certain  specific  expressions. 

Doubtless  other  kinds  of  unity,  in  addition  to 
the  three  classic  unities,  and  to  the  others  named 
above,  might  be  found  or  will  be  sometimes 
defined;  for  it  seems  to  be  a  common  human 
pastime  to  seek  artistic  reasons  for  doing  as  one 
likes.  Practically,  however,  the  best  way  to 
gain  unity  is  not  to  think  about  it,  but  to  think 
of  a  subject  till  you  know  what  you  think  and 
wish  to  say  about  it;  and  having  done  thus,  to 
adopt  as  uniform  a  basis  of  treatment  as  may 
be,  with  due  regard  to  the  frailty  of  the  reader. 
If  it  be  handy  to  tie  oneself  to  the  apron-strings  of 
formal  partition,  —  a  practice  not  disdained  by 
Mill,  Macaulay,  and  many  other  clear  writers,  — 
by  all  means  do  so.  The  only  general  rule  is 
that  nothing  should  be  despised  that  tends  to 
clarity,  unless  truth  is  thereby  sacrificed  or  the 
reader  be  bored  with  too  much  movement  of  the 
wheels. 

Coherence  in  composition  means  order,  noth- 
ing more  and  nothing  less.  Granted  that  you 
know  your  mind,  know  what  you  wish  to  say; 
coherence  is  simply  the  dividing  of  the  material 


GOOD  WRITING  AS  COMPOSITION    65 

into  groups  and  the  treatment  of  the  groups  one 
after  another  in  the  best  specific  order  that  can 
be  found  for  those  specific  facts.  Coherence  is, 
therefore,  but  another  way  of  saying  that  the 
facts  in  a  piece  of  writing  must  be  intelligibly 
classified.  They  may  follow  one  another  ac- 
cording to  any  of  the  plans  that  have  been  spoken 
of,  —  time,  cause,  juxtaposition,  logic,  etc.,  — 
by  any  method  that  accords  with  the  relationship 
of  the  facts  that  the  writer  wishes  to  bring  out. 
The  test  of  coherence  is  that  the  reader  under- 
stands this  relationship,  that  he  can,  in  short, 
see  where  each  fact  goes. 

Hence  coherence  depends  in  many  ways  on 
the  intelligence  of  the  reader,  and  it  is  quite  use- 
less to  attempt  to  establish  rules  for  literary 
order.  The  main  thing  is  that  writing  should 
go  from  some  point  to  some  point,  and  that  the 
bearing  of  the  details  should  be  clear.  To  be 
sure,  we  do  but  conform  to  a  natural  plan  when 
in  dealing  with  certain  events  we  follow  the  order 
of  time,  and  certain  forms  of  literature,  as  the 
sonnet  or  the  five-act  play,  have,  through  long 
experience,  become  highly  conventionalized;  so 
that  one  has  to  do  little  more,  material  and  genius 
apart,  than  to  place  his  ideas  in  a  carefully  pre- 
pared envelope.  But  any  attempt  to  say  that 
a  writer  should  proceed  from  general  to  particular, 
or  from  principle  to  illustration,  or  from  simple 
to  complex,  is  likely  to  be  futile;  for  in  any  given 
case  the  better  practice,  where  not  prescribed  by 


66         WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

customary  forms,  may  be  to  reverse  these  ar- 
rangements. In  literary  structure  many  things 
are  natural  and  logical,  or  handy  and  conven- 
tional, but  few  are  inevitable  or  ideal. 

Coherence  is  probably  best  understood  by 
the  examination  of  actual  pieces  of  good  arrange- 
ment and  of  specific  literary  devices  that  have 
been  used  to  promote  it.  We  need  not  now 
dwell  on  those  temporal  relations  of  fact  to  fact 
which  are  illustrated  in  elaborate  historical  com- 
positions, on  the  one  hand,  or,  on  the  other,  in 
those  humbler  items,  such  as  the  story  of  the 
survivor  or  the  classical  case  of  Wragg  (see 
Arnold's  The  Function  of  Criticism  at  the  Present 
Time).  Mill,  Newman,  Arnold,  Huxley,  and 
William  James,  for  example,  are  prose  writers 
of  very  high  quality;  others  may  be  as  lucid,  as 
coherent;  but  it  does  not  really  matter  whom, 
within  certain  limits,  one  selects  for  illustration. 
Now  these  writers  gain  coherence  in  no  one  way; 
they  differ  from  one  another,  and  the  different 
writings  of  each  need  not  necessarily  follow  any 
one  formula.  Mill's  famous  essay  On  Liberty  is 
the  statement  of  a  principle  of  action,  supported 
by  argument,  and  applied  to,  rather  than  illus- 
trated by,  specific  instances  of  the  infringement 
of  the  principle;  his  Autobiography,  which  might 
be  called  narrative  or  exposition,  is  a  statement 
of  his  successive  occupations  and  achievements, 
and  of  the  educative  influences  which  were  at 
work  at  the  various  stages  of  his  career.  New- 


GOOD  WRITING  AS  COMPOSITION    67 

man's  Idea  of  a  University,  particularly  in  sepa- 
rate chapters,  is  a  series  of  progressions  and  of 
developments,  whether  by  agreement  or  animad- 
version, from  one  position  to  a  slightly  more 
advanced  position,  until  from  a  simple  state- 
ment or  antithesis  he  has  arrived  at  a  glowing 
conclusion,  which  has  quite  carried  him  away, 
often  from  the  facts  of  the  case;  his  Apologia  is 
an  explanation  of  his  spiritual  equipment  and 
his  doctrinal  changes,  presented  in  stages,  much 
as  is  Mill's  Autobiography,  but  presented  in  a 
much  more  controversial  tone  than  the  latter 
book.  Arnold,  in  Celtic  Literature,  as  frequently 
elsewhere,  proceeds  by  a  series  of  exclusions  to 
find  the  thread  of  the  "real"  thing,  to  winnow 
the  gram  of  Arnoldian  truth  from  the  chaff  of 
common  or  learned  misconception;  in  his  essay 
on  Gray  he  attempts,  with  a  palpable  disregard 
of  strict  logical  possibilities,  to  find  the  explana- 
tion of  an  alleged  fact  —  the  "real"  reason  why 
Gray  "never  spoke  out"  was  that  he  "fell  on  an 
age  of  prose."  Huxley,  a  master  of  expository 
method,  may,  as  in  A  Piece  of  Chalk,  describe  a 
simple  phenomenon  in  its  common  aspect,  and 
then,  by  examining  it  from  other  points  of  view 
and  with  other  instruments,  elucidate  new  facts, 
which  finally  frame  a  general  idea  of  the  making 
of  the  world;  or  he  may,  as  in  his  lectures  on 
Evolution,  having  stated  three  actual  and  histori- 
cal hypotheses  regarding  the  origin  of  things,  pro- 
ceed to  examine  these  hypotheses  in  the  light  of 


68         WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

the  evidence.  James's  The  Varieties  of  Religious 
Experience  is  a  grouping  and  an  illustration  of 
various  differing  facts  of  conversion  and  of  types 
of  temperament,  and  such  things;  his  Human 
Immortality  analyzes  certain  currently  recog- 
nized and  possible  functions  of  the  human  mind, 
and  argues  in  behalf  of  open-mindedness  in  the 
examination  of  these  aspects  of  the  matter.  The 
reader  will  at  once  remark  that  these  differences 
in  method  are  really  differences  in  fact,  that 
James's  method  in  Human  Immortality  is  the 
outcome  of  his  open-mindedness,  his  harboring 
of  all  suggestions;  just  as  Arnold's  exclusive- 
ness,  as  in  Gray,  results  from  a  too  constant 
desire  to  assert  the  claims  of  the  "real,"  to  the 
possible  banishment  of  other  equally  good  things. 
But  the  answer  is  evident:  in  dealing  with  co- 
herence, you  cannot  get  away  from  a  man's 
quality  or  his  facts;  his  literary  ways  depend 
on  these.  Consequently  original  writers  not 
only  give  us  new  ideas,  they  also  give  us  new 
ways  of  treating  and  arranging  ideas;  consider 
the  immense  influence  of  Mill,  Darwin,  and 
James  from  this  point  of  view.  The  venerable 
"first,  second,  third"  of  the  preacher,  to  take 
another  instance,  is  sometimes  looked  upon  with 
distrust  because  it  assumes  an  order  that  may 
be  merely  arbitrary.  That  method  has  often 
still  to  be  used,  especially  in  enumeration,  how- 
ever it  may  be  disguised;  but  as  we  become 
better  acquainted  with  the  order  of  things  in 


GOOD  WRITING  AS  COMPOSITION       69 

the  world,  or  of  our  business,  or  of  the  wishes  of 
our  correspondents,  we  are  likely  to  adopt  some- 
thing approximating  to  that  order.  The  best 
method  of  studying  coherence  is  really  to  examine 
good  writers,  who  are  many,  and,  on  the  whole, 
to  examine  modern  writers.  The  time  when  one 
"must  give  his  days  and  nights  to  the  volumes 
of  Addison,"  or  Burke,  or  De  Quincey,  or  Cole- 
ridge, or  other  classic,  exclusively,  has  happily 
passed.  This  is  but  natural,  since  their  ideas 
have  given  place  to  new  interests,  new  concep- 
tions, new  ideas;  and  hence  to  new  structure. 
It  is  obviously  an  act  of  bad  faith  to  the  modern 
conception  of  organic  evolution  to  assume  that 
good  modern  writers  may  not  have  profited, 
directly  or  indirectly,  by  what  their  predecessors 
had  to  say.  It  is  indeed  a  grave  literary  and 
pedagogical  fallacy  to  assume,  as  is  sometimes 
done,  that  good  moderns  have  nothing  to  tell 
us  about  composition  that  could  not  better  be 
found  in  the  ancients,  from  any  point  of  view, 
whether  of  style  or  of  structure. 

Doubtless  a  considerable  book  could  be  written 
on  the  history  of  rhetorical  devices  for  gaining 
coherence  and  on  the  history  of  thought  as 
expressed  in  literary  structure;  we  should  have 
a  branch  of  the  science  of  semantics,  described 
by  Mr.  Pearsall  Smith  in  The  English  Language 
(p.  126).  But  the  object  of  the  preceding  para- 
graph is  to  insist  on  the  fact  that  we  are  dealing 
with  an  actual  instrument  of  order  rather  than 


70         WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

the  development  of  that  instrument.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  no  sensible  critic  would  dream  of 
censuring  the  order  of  any  production  in  any 
genre  on  the  ground  that  it  did  not  conform  to 
the  practice  of  certain  standard  writers.  The 
critic  and  the  reader  alike  would  blame  the 
composition  primarily  because  the  facts  were 
wrong,  and,  secondarily,  because  the  ideas  and 
their  bearing  on  one  another  were  obscure,  or 
because  there  might  be  a  better  arrangement. 
Obviously  any  knowledge  of  facts  or  skill  in 
composition  would  be  brought  to  bear  on  this 
matter,  but  these  would  be  a  matter  of  tact 
rather  than  of  authority.  Coherence,  in  fine,  is 
clear  arrangement,  for  which  specific  rules  may 
rarely  be  given.  The  best  method  of  study  is 
the  examination  of  coherent  writers,  of  all  ages 
and  assuredly  of  our  own  times,  to  see  how  they 
handle  their  facts,  ideas,  illustrations,  digressions, 
exceptions,  qualifications,  etc.,  and  in  this  regard 
the  reasonable  aid  of  advice,  of  sketches,  abstracts, 
contents,  briefs,  formal  partitions,  is  to  be  courted. 
Emphasis  in  composition  is  but  another  way 
of  saying  that  important  ideas  shall  be  given 
important  treatment.  Emphasis  is,  therefore, 
largely  a  matter  of  device,  and  the  most  natural 
device  is  to  say  that  certain  things  are  more 
important  than  others,  as  is  done  by  judges  in 
charging  juries.  Other  common  methods  are 
to  be  seen  in  the  somewhat  mechanical  use  of 
headlines  in  newspapers,  in  the  "display"  of 


GOOD  WRITING  AS  COMPOSITION    71 

text-books,  in  classified  and  subdivided  tables 
of  contents,  in  the  "featuring"  of  the  dramatic 
star  in  the  program.  All  these  rest  on  the  fact 
that  the  eye  is  more  quickly  caught  by  emblazon- 
ment and  iteration  than  by  simple  statement. 
Hence  we  often  find  emphasis  pressed  to  sensa- 
tionalism, and  reiteration  to  the  limits  of  weari- 
ness and  nagging.  Literary  devices  for  emphasis 
are  such  things  as  illustration  and  example, 
contrast,  suspense,  climax,  selection,  antithesis, 
hyperbole,  irony.  Some  of  these  are  cheap,  or 
annoying,  or  detestable,  or  offensive  to  taste. 
But  any  fundamental  objection  to  bad  emphasis 
lies  in  its  distortion  of  facts  for  the  sake  of  sen- 
sationalism or  effect.  Thus  modern  English  criti- 
cism finds  some  fault  with  Macaulay's  "stamp- 
ing emphasis,"  and  the  censure  comes  down  to 
the  allegation  that  he  distorted  fact  and  judg- 
ment in  the  interests  of  contrast.  Thus  para- 
doxical writers  paint  the  past  and  the  present 
ultra-ego  —  or,  more  exactly,  the  infra-ego  —  as 
wrong,  in  order  to  give  their  own  ideas  and  reac- 
tions sublimer  relief.  Though  it  is,  in  any  event, 
a  great  pity  to  waste  harmless  wood-pulp  on 
huge  headlines,  it  is  also  quite  possible  for  a 
newspaper  that  eschews  these  methods  to  per- 
petuate tumult  and  shouting  and  all  the  vices 
that  go  with  intellectual  noise.  On  the  whole, 
provided  a  writer  does  not  go  beyond  what  he 
can  truthfully  say,  little  serious  damage  will 
come  of  using  literary  and  mechanical  devices. 


72         WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

Here  again  the  best  method  is  to  examine  the 
works  of  good  modern  writers. 

Theoretically,  it  would  seem  best,  when  we  have 
had  our  say,  to  stop.  Practically,  to  do  this  is 
not  so  easy;  for  certain  formalities,  or  refinements, 
or  necessities  of  the  subject  call  for  more  conse- 
quential treatment.  Instead  of  saying  "The 
End,"  we  run  down  by  inference.  Running 
down  is  always  a  slow  process  after  one  is  well 
wound  up.  The  volume  of  words  used  by  inex- 
perienced or  by  habitual  speakers  and  writers 
may  have  no  relation  to  the  number  of  ideas. 
Endings  are  commonly  thought  to  be  the  hardest 
part  of  composition.  In  general,  they  may  be 
said  to  depend  on  what  has  gone  before,  — finis 
ab  origine  pendet  is  the  classical  warrant  for  this 
assertion,  — and  this  fact  of  dependency  expresses 
itself  in  a  variety  of  types  of  closure.  The  most 
conventional,  those  of  letters,  need  not  detain 
us.  For  convenience,  we  may  think  of  endings 
as  static,  as  logical  or  conclusive,  and  as  formal 
or  stylistic. 

Static  endings  are  best  seen  in  compositions 
moving  in  time  order.  Events  or  processes  have 
arrived  at  a  certain  point.  Thus  the  bread 
recipe  tells  us  to  "bake  in  a  hot  oven  one  hour 
and  lay  aside  to  cool  before  eating."  Thus 
novel  and  dramatic  endings  arrive  through  a 
series  of  unstable  situations,  to  a  point  where  we 
may  leave  the  scene  in  joy  or  sadness,  knowing 


GOOD  WRITING  AS  COMPOSITION    73 

that  the  lovers  have  been  parted  forever,  that 
the  feud  has  been  reconciled,  that  the  good  people 
have  had  blessings  bestowed  upon  them  and 
that  the  bad  people  are  in  jail,  that  the  hid 
treasure  has  been  recovered,  that  the  chief 
character  has  made  an  ass  of  himself.  Thus 
Rome  is  conceived  as  having  finally  fallen,  "its 
huge  bulk  stretched  along  the  ground,"  and  the 
Middle  Ages  as  having  made  a  formal  exit,  and 
History  as  having  fully  dawned,  and  the  Renais- 
sance as  having  turned  up  its  toes  and  being 
laid  out  for  decent  burial.  Rome,  or  the  Middle 
Ages,  or  History,  or  the  Renaissance,  in  any 
one  of  these  interesting  positions,  may  be  the 
subject  for  picturing,  or  for  reflection,  or  for 
moralizing,  before  life  begins  anew  in  some 
other  book  or  some  other  part  of  the  world.  In 
all  these  instances  the  ending  selects,  from  the 
vast  variety  of  actual  happenings,  the  facts  of 
restfulness  and  achievement.  The  horse  is  tied 
to  the  hitching-post,  the  rider  has  dismounted; 
he  no  longer  heeds  the  passing  of  other  wayfarers. 
The  method  blossoms  at  its  prettiest  in  our  fine 
sentimental  novels;  the  more  modern  works  of 
fiction  and  fact  are  inclined  to  cut  down  the 
exposition  of  status  to  the  lowest  limits  of  epi- 
gram or  fact. 

Logical  endings  naturally  present  themselves 
as  conclusions  from  antecedent  facts.  They  are 
best  seen  in  argument,  where  a  statement  of 
the  evidence  and  a  train  of  reasoning  is  followed 


74          WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

by  certain  formal  deductions  or  formal  general- 
izations. Legal  procedure  furnishes  a  good 
example,  because  a  trial  may  be  conceived  as  a 
complete  composition:  witnesses  give  evidence, 
lawyers  reason  about  that  evidence,  judge  and 
jury  find  on  that  evidence.  But  the  endings  of 
novels,  dramas,  and  other  imaginative  works 
are  frequently  conceived  in  logical  or  causal 
terms.  Thus  the  important  person  in  The  Mill 
on  the  Floss ,  or  in  Tess  of  the  D'Urbervilles,  or 
The  Ebb  Tide,  is  predoomed  to  failure,  because 
unfit  for  her  environment,  or  by  reason  of  a 
more  powerful,  capricious,  and  exterminating 
fate,  or  through  his  plain  lack  of  character. 
This  kind  of  ending  is  sometimes  called  "inevi- 
table," and  the  devising  of  it  is  counted  one  of 
the  great  triumphs  of  modern  narrative  method. 
Life  is  conceived  of  in  more  sequential  terms 
than  in  earlier  fiction;  doubtless  the  novelist 
would  have  everything  turn  out  well,  but  he  is 
bound  to  his  last  of  serious  interpretation  and 
cannot  go  beyond  it. 

Evidently  in  conclusive  endings,  and,  to  some 
degree,  in  static  endings  it  is  important  that  one 
should  not  go  beyond  the  facts  or  the  probabili- 
ties. Examples  of  statement  totally  unwarranted 
by  preceding  evidence  are,  however,  frequent 
enough  in  composition  of  the  logical  type.  Such 
conclusions  may  arise  out  of  the  notion  that 
since  convention  calls  for  some  kind  of  dignified 
exit,  positive  endings  to  all  subjects  are  as  inevi- 


GOOD  WRITING  AS  COMPOSITION    75 

table  as  death.  But  one  should  always  bear 
in  mind  that  from  many  bodies  of  interesting 
fact  no  sound  conclusion  can  be  drawn,  nor  can 
an  inquirer  always  find  the  theory  or  the  general- 
ization that  he  went  out  to  seek.  Therefore  if 
we  must  have  conclusions,  —  and  we  all  feel  the 
immense  pressure  we  are  always  under  to  squeeze 
out  something  positive,  to  exude  "It  is  so's," 
as  the  silkworm  exudes  fly-leaders  and  silk,  — 
the  safest  course  is  to  cut  out  all  facts  that  do 
not  point  the  way  we  want  them  to  point.  Such 
a  method  is,  as  has  been  said,  not  infrequently 
the  method  of  thesis  composition.  One  might 
almost  say  that  the  real  conclusiveness  is  in 
inverse  proportion  to  its  length:  The  Origin  of 
Species,  for  example,  is  considerably  more  tenta- 
tive and  less  rhetorically  conclusive  than  a  leader 
in,  say,  The  Standard,  or  the  New  York  Evening 
Post,  —  yet  the  former  has  had  quite  as  much 
effect  in  the  long  run. 

The  same  principles  apply  to  endings  in  imagi- 
native literature.  Any  great  going  beyond  the 
situations  that  have  been  premised  or,  in  real- 
istic novels,  the  plausibilities  of  common  life, 
tends  to  melodrama.  Good  melodrama  is  surely 
a  very  delightful  thing,  but  it  does  not  belong 
to  the  province  of  the  "inevitable."  In  narra- 
tion, as  in  argumentation  and  exposition  — 
though  to  no  such  exacting  degree  —  it  is  prob- 
ably reasonable  to  make  logical  conclusions  a 
little  less  round  than  one  would  like,  to  allow 


76         WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

something,  in  short,  to  chance,  or  to  the  possi- 
bility of  error.  Moderation  and  restraint  are 
good  to  cultivate. 

The  place  of  these  logical  endings  would  seem 
to  be  at  the  end.  Just  as  at  the  beginning  of  a 
piece  of  writing  it  is  well  to  put  oneself  in  the 
hands  of  formal  partition,  or  statement  of  pur- 
pose and  plan,  so  an  ending  may  not  inconven- 
iently be  preceded  by  a  formal  summary  of 
what  has  gone  before.  Such  a  summary  is  really 
a  very  good  test  of  the  order  of  a  piece;  if  you 
cannot  summarize  the  main  points  of  your  argu- 
ment, the  reader  also  may  miss  them;  the  struc- 
ture is  probably  wretched.  Such  summary  is 
especially  useful  when,  as  often  with  inexperienced 
writers,  the  conclusion  has  been  allowed  to  leak 
out  at  all  points,  until  nothing  is  left  but  flat  and 
impotent  repetition.  In  a  very  different  way, 
of  course,  this  diffused  conclusion,  as  it  may  be 
called,  is  often  seen  in  newspaper  editorials; 
the  conclusion  is  also  the  thunder  that  rever- 
berates from  paragraph  to  paragraph  throughout 
the  discourse,  and  the  dispensing  of  this  fulmina- 
tion  requires  an  experienced  and  Jovian  hand. 
Novels,  again,  under  the  term  unity  of  tone  do 
often  illustrate  this  diffusion. 

Whereas  it  is  desirable  that  logical  endings 
should  not  go  beyond  the  facts,  either  in  deduc- 
tion or  in  prophecy,  the  reverse  is  likely  to  be 
true  in  formal  or  stylistic  endings,  —  as  when 
you  may  call  a  man  a  liar,  signing  the  letter 


GOOD  WRITING  AS  COMPOSITION    77 

"faithfully  yours."  Stylistic  endings  probably 
arise  from  a  desire  to  be  rather  more  formal,  or 
enthusiastic,  or  suggestive,  or  persuasive,  than 
is  strictly  in  accord  with  fact  and  logic.  Or  they 
may  result  from  a  writer's  being  bewitched  by 
his  own  eloquence,  or  from  his  skilful  seizure  of 
an  opportunity  to  impress  his  readers,  in  whom 
he  has  already  developed  sympathy.  Stylistic 
endings  are  very  common  in  all  literature  of  all 
kinds,  poetical  and  prosaic.  Thus  Milton  may 
be  thought  to  have  written  his  sonnet  to  the  line 
"They  also  serve  who  only  stand  and  wait." 
Thus: 

"  The  soul  of  Adonais,  like  a  star, 
Beacons  from  the  abode  where  the  Eternal  are." 

Thus  Marc  Antony  succeeds  in  crying  havoc  and 
in  letting  slip  the  dogs  of  war.  Thus  Newman 
is  likely  to  close  each  section  of  a  chapter  in  a 
higher  key  than  the  preceding.  Thus  Ruskin 
abounds  in  bursts  of  alliteration  and  eloquence. 
Thus  the  conclusions  of  newspaper  editorials 
are  redolent  of  general  praise  or  blame  of  the 
government:  whatever  the  specific  occasion, 
Delenda  est  Carthago.  Thus  Mr.  Bryce,  a  clear 
observer  of  facts,  closes  many  chapters  of  the 
American  Commonwealth  with  a  metaphor  about 
vehicles  traversing  roads  or  some  other  figurative 
suggestion  of  the  main  point.  Thus  Mr.  Bryan 
has  mankind  "crucified  on  a  cross  of  gold." 
Thus  in  general  we  try  to  do  pretty  and  per- 


78         WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

suasive  things,  and  they  are  justified  less  by  being 
literary  devices  than  by  standing  for  some  real 
enthusiasm  and  belief. 

Such  are  the  chief  general  facts  about  composi- 
tion; some  special  applications  will  be  made  in 
the  following  chapters.  In  closing  this  chapter, 
it  may  be  well  to  repeat  the  remark  that  the 
best  way  of  studying  composition  is  to  examine 
various  actual  compositions  of  good  quality  and 
different  kinds.  In  any  kind  of  writing,  this 
study  may  best  be  carried  on  by  isolating  the 
beginning  and  the  ending  of  a  piece  of  work,  — 
so  far  as  this  can  be  done  at  all,  —  in  order  to 
see  how  the  author  has  got  from  one  to  the 
other.  That  is,  of  course,  after  one  has  read  for 
profit  or  for  pleasure. 


CHAPTER  III 

NARRATION,   DESCRIPTION,   AND    EXPOSITION 

THE  general  principles  of  composition  ex- 
pounded in  the  preceding  chapter  may  now  be 
more  specially  applied  to  various  types  of  writ- 
ing. Writing  is  classified  in  various  ways,  as 
into  prose  and  verse,  at  one  extreme,  and,  at 
the  other,  into  that  great  variety  of  forms  — 
novels,  histories,  sonnets,  short  stories,  leaders, 
reviews,  news  items,  sermons,  essays,  speeches, 
etc.,  —  which  do  but  name  common  occasions. 
For  our  present  purposes  we  may,  without 
apology,  accept  the  ordinary  rhetorical  classes 
of  narration,  description,  exposition,  and  argu- 
mentation as  covering  the  whole  field.  The 
distinctions  between  these  forms  of  discourse 
cannot  be  precisely  stated.  Practically,  it  is 
unimportant  to  do  so,  since  these  forms  do  not 
exist  in  a  pure  state,  but  merely  represent  general 
tendencies,  and  are  crossing  one  another  at  all 
points.  Popularly,  too,  we  usually  know  that 
novels,  books  of  travel,  histories,  newspaper 
items,  are  likely  to  be  narration,  or  to  contain 
a  good  deal  of  narrative;  that  society  news, 
"lost"  notices,  advertisements,  are  likely  to  be 
79 


80         WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

descriptive;  that  cook-books,  guide-books,  trea- 
tises, many  essays,  are  to  a  great  degree  exposi- 
tory; that  sermons,  editorial  articles,  contro- 
versial articles,  debates,  "committees  of  the 
whole,"  are  pretty  sure  to  contain  a  good  deal 
of  argumentation.  If  the  point  may  be  pressed 
into  a  single  sentence,  we  might  say  that  each 
of  these  forms  stands  for  a  general  kind  of  facts  — 
facts  of  past  action,  facts  of  past  or  present  ap- 
pearance, facts  of  constant  status,  and  facts 
derived  by  comparison  of  other  facts.  These 
catch-terms  are  evidently  used  with  much  loose- 
ness: but  what  is  meant  will  become  clear  as  we 
proceed. 

The  kind  of  composition,  or  the  devices  of 
writing  which  may  be  used  in  dealing  with  these 
various  kinds  of  facts,  is  what  we  are  concerned 
with.  Of  these  methods  it  may  be  remarked 
that  new  facts  or  new  conceptions  of  fact  do 
engender  new  methods  of  composition;  this  we 
have  seen  in  the  preceding  chapter,  where  it  was 
said  that  new  notions  of  the  relation  of  events 
have  given  rise  to  better  knit  narrative.  Or 
again,  the  not  uncommon  modern  device  of 
dwelling  on  sensations  and  moods  may  call  for 
more  analytical  and  detailed  description  than 
when  Homer  was  content  to  label  waves  "milk 
white."  We  have  further,  and  always,  to  bear 
in  mind  that  the  object  of  any  literary  method 
is  presumably  to  make  material  clearer  or  more 
interesting  to  the  reader,  whether  for  ideal 


NARRATION  81 

or  for  practical  purposes.  One  may  revert  to 
old  anecdotes,  or  revert  again  and  again  to  his 
symptoms  and  feelings,  or  may  reiterate  the 
fact  that  two  and  two  make  four,  or  may  argue 
the  proposition  that  Italians  are  fond  of  mac- 
aroni, —  all  in  perfect  structure,  —  but,  unless 
one  makes  up  for  old  matter  by  charm  of  style 
or  manages  to  suggest  something  of  greater 
importance  than  the  mere  old  facts,  he  will  bore 
his  readers,  —  practically  his  composition  will 
be  bad.  In  other  words,  and  on  the  whole,  we 
may  say,  considering  the  matter  in  the  interests 
of  the  reader,  that  narration  deals  with  the 
unfamiliar,  description  with  the  unseen  or  the 
unfelt,  exposition  with  the  unknown,  and  argu- 
mentation with  the  unbelieved,  or,  in  persuasion 
and  exhortation,  with  the  undone.  That  is  to 
say,  reverting  to  the  distinctions  of  the  preced- 
ing paragraph,  narration  is  engaged  in  salting 
down  what  has  happened  or  is  imagined  to  have 
happened,  and  is  primarily  engaged  in  looking 
for  new  events  to  salt  down;  description  is 
continually  adding  to  the  corpus  of  recorded 
appearance;  ^exposition  is  striving  to  place  new 
ideas,  concepts,  inventions,  etc.,  in  the  cold 
storage  of  reality;  argumentation  is  always 
busy  with  finding  new  and  recasting  old  judg- 
ments. One  may  peruse  the  old  record  to  his 
heart's  content;  but  these  forms,  considered  as 
active  human  process,  as  part  and  parcel  of  our 
mental  life,  are  as  has  been  explained.  Loosely 


82         WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

as  these  antitheses  are  used,  the  tendencies  that 
they  represent  have  to  be  taken  into  considera- 
tion in  the  following  account  of  structure. 


It  is  not  very  important  for  our  purposes  to 
note  that  NARRATION  is  usually  classified  as 
fact  —  history,  biography,  etc.,  —  and  fiction  — 
novels,  stories,  etc.,  —  dealing  with  imaginary 
events;  nor  the  further  conception  of  fiction  as 
realistic,  in  so  far  as  it  is  based  on  actual  life, 
or  idealistic  or  romantic,  when  it  attempts  to 
substitute  beautiful  conceptions  and  general 
views  for  happenings  of  a  more  humdrum  and 
particular  sort.  Narratives  exist  in  all  forms  and 
varieties  and  do  a  great  many  things.  What  is 
common  to  them  all  is  the  fact  that  they  deal 
with  particular  things,  and  that  they  represent 
these  things  as  moving  from  one  point  in  time 
to  another  point  in  time;  and  also,  that  in  doing 
this,  they  make  use  of  action  or  events,  actors 
or  characters,  and  setting  or  place.  It  would  be 
more  accurate  to  say  that  when  you  have  a 
literary  record  of  such  elements,  you  have 
what  is  called  narrative.  These  elements  may  be 
very  briefly  indicated,  as  in  short  items;  they 
may  be  stocks  and  stones;  the  interactions  of 
one  upon  another  may  be  very  intricate;  but 
all  will  be  found  in  one  form  or  another. 

Now  the  general  course  of  that  movement 
from  one  point  to  another  is,  in  fiction,  called 


NARRATION  83 

plot,  but  the  term  could  also  be  applied  to  fact 
narrative.  Some  one  has  said  that  only  about 
half  a  dozen  plots  can  be  found  in  literature. 
The  remark,  whether  anybody  ever  said  it  or 
not,  is  in  some  respects  true.  A  novel  proceeds 
from  a  situation,  through  a  series  of  situations, 
to  a  final  state  of  rest:  in  general,  all  that  can 
happen  is  that  people  in  various  relations  and 
spheres  have  various  things  happen  to  them,  or 
do  various  things,  or  get  their  characters  tar- 
nished or  brightened  up,  in  a  variety  of  ways. 
So  in  history,  men,  from  a  condition  represented 
as  more  or  less  stable,  may  grow  restive,  as  a 
community  or  in  spots,  may  feel  the  pressure 
of  drought  or  of  ambition,  may  change  their 
rulers  or  their  form  of  government,  or  may  be 
overwhelmed  by  the  Huns  or  the  Ostrogoths  or 
with  yearning  for  their  neighbor's  cattle;  and 
during  all  this  may  have  moments  of  elation, 
misery,  glory,  privation,  sorrow.  So  with  bi- 
ography and  autobiography;  a  man  must  have 
done  something  to  have  it  written.  So  in  a  news 
item  somebody  does  something  out  of  the  ordi- 
nary, and  something  out  of  the  ordinary  happens 
to  him:  he  is  sent  to  jail,  or  crushed  by  the 
automobile,  or  takes  refuge  in  foreign  lands,  or, 
being  in  fine  fettle,  makes  a  century  or  a  field- 
goal.  The  general  course  of  events  in  narration 
is  not  great.  It  is  merely  the  process  of  setting 
up  a  series  of  situations  that  are  unstable  in  that 
they  compel  the  actors  to  move  on  to  some- 


84         WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

thing  else,  or  that  are  so  uncommon  that  the 
reader  wishes  to  know  what  they  lead  to.  But 
when  it  comes  to  filling  out  the  formula  with 
specific  fact,  the  product  is  legion  and  various. 

Movement,  that  very  important  thing  in  all 
narration,  may  not  unreasonably  be  thought  of 
under  the  figure  of  feeding  in  material  to  a  plot, 
to  the  end  that  a  good  product  may  result,  just 
as  wire  is  fed  into  a  machine  and  emerges  in  the 
form  of  nails.  The  figure  would  probably  be 
more  suggestive  if  we  could  turn  it  the  other  way 
round,  imagining  the  machine  to  convert  scraps 
into  smooth  and  polished  steel  wire.  In  any 
event,  the  success  of  narrative  movement  de- 
pends on  what  is  fed  into  the  machine  and  how 
it  is  fed  in.  According  to  one's  purpose,  one 
may  amass  adventures,  or  collect  character,  or 
scenery,  of  all  sorts  and  kinds.  An  objection 
not  infrequently  urged  by  modern  critics  against 
the  narrative  method  of  earlier  novelists  (see, 
for  example,  Mr.  W.  D.  Howells's  Criticism  and 
Fiction)  is  that  they  used  foreign  matter  with 
too  open  a  hand,  —  that  Thackeray,  say,  clogged 
his  discourse  with  too  many  side  remarks;  that 
Scott  threw  in  large  lumps  of  scenery,  or  descrip- 
tion of  antiquities,  or  what  not;  that  the  digres- 
sions and  sub-stories  in  Cervantes,  Fielding, 
Dickens,  and  other  men  of  note,  flatly  stop  the 
narrative  machine,  interrupting  alike  the  flow 
of  the  writer's  imagination  and  the  attention  of 
the  reader.  When  we  speak  of  novels  of  adven- 


NARRATION  85 

ture,  of  character,  of  dramatic  movement,  — • 
whatever  these  terms  be  worth,  —  we  do  but 
contemplate  an  alleged  general  difference  in 
kinds  of  material.  When  we  object  to  irrele- 
vance, to  digressions,  to  tediousness,  to  heaviness, 
to  shallowness,  in  stories,  we  are  merely  saying 
that  wrong  or  worthless  things  are  fed  into  the 
machine.  If  one  may  indulge  in  a  trifling  fancy, 
in  these  days  when  minute  speculation  on  differ- 
ences in  literary  form  is  a  prevailing  pastime,  one 
might  offer  for  what  it  is  worth  the  suggestion 
that  the  real  difference  between  the  short  story 
and  the  novel  is  that,  in  the  former,  all  the 
ingredients  are  placed  in  the  hopper  at  once; 
the  machine  is  then  turned  on  and  stopped  when 
the  hopper  is  empty.  In  the  novel,  new  stuff 
is  thrown  in  from  time  to  time,  at  random  or 
according  to  a  scheme,  until  the  author  has  pro- 
jected his  eighty  thousand  words  or  his  three 
volumes. 

The  study  of  narrative  structure  is,  therefore,  es- 
sentially the  study  of  aids  to  movement,  whether 
for  the  sake  of  the  material  or  of  the  reader. 
In  the  realm  of  reality,  what  is  put  in  depends 
on  what  there  is  to  put  in,  on  the  facts  of  his- 
torical or  personal  record.  They  are  made  to 
move  in  time  and  also,  in  many  modern  instances, 
as  a  series  of  relations.  In  fiction,  the  material 
may  be  about  what  one  pleases,  —  within  the 
restrictions  of  dullness,  flatness,  obviousness,  and 
impropriety,  —  but  the  chain  of  events  must 


86          WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

be  kept  running  through  the  block  of  verisimili- 
tude. The  principle  is  recognized  by  all  novelists. 
Trollope,  for  example,  tells  us  in  his  Autobiography 
that  his  chief  concern  was  to  keep  his  story 
going.  Stevenson,  presumably  on  the  same  prin- 
ciple, disperses  his  descriptions  lightly  through 
his  pages  whenever  need  arises,  not  introduc- 
ing them  in  any  lengthy  and  formal  manner; 
there  is  less  danger  that  they  may  become  dull 
or  be  regarded  as  irrelevant.  The  constant 
introduction  of  new  things  or  of  new  develop- 
ments from  old  situations  is  the  material  side  of 
the  matter.  The  application  of  the  so-called 
principles  of  composition  is  here  obvious:  unity 
means  a  careful  selection  of  material  and  the 
removal  of  all  husks  that  would  clog  movement; 
coherence,  an  arrangement  of  plot  with  as  few 
hitches  as  possible;  emphasis,  the  elevating  of 
important  and  the  slighting  of  irrelevant  matter. 
Of  literary  devices,  suspense  merely  means  a 
holding  back  of  the  movement  that  its  course 
may  be  more  torrential;  climax,  that  movement 
progresses  to  a  culminating  point. 

The  point  of  certain  literary  practices  appears 
clearly  in  this  light.  Stories  may  be  told  in  the 
first  person  or  in  the  third  person.  If  in  the  first 
person,  they  may  be  done  by  many  persons  or  by 
one  person.  A  story  told  by  many  people  is 
likely  to  be  tedious  because  of  shifts  and  inter- 
ruptions and  the  fact  that  it  is  likely  to  be  tedious 
with  repetitions,  even  if  the  characters  are  varied. 


NARRATION  87 

Hence  novels  in  the  form  of  letters  are  not  now 
much  in  vogue;  and  readers  are  likely,  as  were 
the  Mona  Lisa  eyelids,  to  be  "a  little  weary" 
before  coming  to  the  last  of,  say,  the  twelve 
versions  of  the  same  plot  in  The  Ring  and  the 
Book.  Where  the  narrator  is  one  person,  as  in 
Lorna  Doone,  Esmond,  or  David  Copperfield,  there 
is  better  chance  for  unity  of  fact  and  unity  of  tone, 
in  that  whatever  happens  happens  to  one  person 
or  is  told  as  seen  or  heard  by  him.  But  characters 
are  often  very  prolix,  and  the  writer  often  has 
to  exercise  much  restraint  to  protect  his  move- 
ment from  maundering.  A  gifted  mind  may 
give  his  movement  real  momentum  by  the  intro- 
duction of  weighty  observations,  but,  of  course, 
there  is  always  danger  of  twaddle.  The  third 
person  method  obviously  gives  the  writer  a 
much  freer  hand  to  make  such  shifts  as  are 
necessary  to  keep  the  progress  alive,  and  if,  in 
this  act,  he  can  also  manage  to  introduce  his 
material  from  one  point  of  view,  a  fine  piece  of 
structure  may  readily  result.  Examples  of  fine 
narrative  structure  and  movement  are  much 
commoner  in  French  than  in  English  literature, 
but,  in  the  latter,  instances  of  movement,  not 
necessarily  swift,  but  always  steady,  are  perhaps 
best  to  be  had  in  such  novels  as  Pride  and  Pre- 
judice or  in  the  works  of  Mr.  Henry  James.  The 
simple  formula  for  these  novels  of  easiest  move- 
ment is  that  the  plot  is  carried  through  by  the 
medium  and  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  chief 


88          WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

character,  who  is,  however,  restrained  from  speak- 
ing his  mind  on  quite  so  many  subjects  as  his 
living  counterpart  might  have  done. 

There  are  many  other  kinds  of  interesting 
movement  in  narration.  Scott,  for  example, 
often  pushed  his  narrative  through  a  series  of 
scenes,  often,  as  in  Ivanhoe,  gathered  into  large 
overlapping  groups;  or  again,  as  in  the  disposal 
of  Rebecca,  Rowena,  and  Isaac  of  York  at  Tor- 
quilstone,  representing  three  simultaneous  hap- 
penings in  three  successive  chapters  all  closed 
by  the  winding  of  Locksley's  horn  outside  the 
castle.  Mr.  Thomas  Hardy,  too,  has  a  fine  eye  for 
scenic  structure,  but  his  scenes  rarely  overlap, 
and  his  novels  progress  by  a  series  of  brilliant 
leaps.  The  same  method  is  pursued  by  Mr. 
Wells,  that  interesting  novelist,  who  maps  his 
progress  into  books,  chapters,  and  sections,  — 
grouping,  under  the  larger  units,  narrative 
events  of  a  prevailing  kind,  each  of  which  is 
treated  in  brilliant  detail,  and  is  united  with  its 
fellows  by  a  slender  thread  of  general  develop- 
ment. Kingsley  was  fond  of  conceiving  the 
structure  of  his  events  as  a  series  of  stages, 
each  of  which,  leading  in  turn  to  spiritual  bank- 
ruptcy, brought  out  the  conclusion,  as  in  Alton 
Locke,  that  happiness  is  not  of  this  world.  Steven- 
son, as  in  Kidnapped,  often  caused  his  hero  to 
reel  through  a  series  of  situations,  "o'erleaping 
himself  and  falling  on  the  other,"  until  suffi- 
cient experience  enabled  him  to  regain  his  equi- 


DESCRIPTION  89 

librium.  Of  fact  narrative  one  may  not  say  so 
much,  since  the  object  of  history  and  biography 
and  books  of  travel  is  to  give  the  facts;  but  here, 
too,  different  conceptions  of  the  relative  impor- 
tance and  of  the  interpretation  of  fact,  as  well  as 
of  the  detail  with  which  events  are  to  be  treated, 
result  in  various  differences.  The  really  impor- 
tant point  of  study  in  all  narrative  composition, 
—  considered  as  a  matter  of  structure,  —  is 
to  note  the  methods  and  the  steps  by  which  a 
novelist  or  historian  or  traveler  or  letter-writer 
progresses  from  an  opening  situation  to  a  closing 
status. 

In  like  manner  the  study  of  structure  in  DE- 
SCRIPTION is  a  study  of  the  schemes  for  making 
clearer  the  appearance  of  things.  Description 
may  deal  with  any  objects,  whether  these  are 
presented  to  organs  of  sense  or  whether  there 
be  included  in  the  term  the  various  particular 
personal  emotions  and  states  of  mind  to  which 
objects,  acts,  and  ideas  may  give  rise.  Thus  an 
advertisement  of  a  lost  brooch,  and  Keats's 
sonnet  On  First  Looking  into  Chapman's  Homer, 
and  the  digestive  distress  of  that  Mr.  Polly  whose 
history  is  so  sympathetically  written  by  Mr. 
Wells,  may  all  be  regarded  as  description.  Fur- 
ther it  should  be  remarked  that  description  is, 
actually,  for  the  most  part,  incidental  to  other 
kinds  of  composition,  as  narration  and  argument, 
where  it  makes  a  scene  more  vivid  or  helps  to 


90         WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

enforce  a  point  and  localize  a  situation.  It  is 
often,  however,  self-contained,  as  in  "wanted" 
advertisements.  Typically,  then,  description, 
in  conforming  to  the  essentially  progressive  and 
accumulative  nature  of  language,  has  to  enumer- 
ate a  series  of  objects  or  accompaniments  until 
the  reader  is  made  aware  of  what  the  main  fact 
looks  like  or  feels  like,  —  which  main  fact  evi- 
dently depends  upon  the  writer's  purpose  in 
producing  the  description. 

In  its  simplest  form,  then,  the  method  of  de- 
scription is  nothing  but  the  enumeration  of  cer- 
tain details  that  go  to  make  up  an  object.  Such 
enumeration  may  evidently  seize  everything  in 
sight,  but  practically  every  description  serves  a 
much  more  special  purpose,  and  is  likely  to 
select  only  salient  features.  Thus  the  descrip- 
tion of  a  malefactor  or  of  a  peaceable  person  or  of 
a  class  of  goods,  is  likely  to  deal  with  individual 
particulars,  and  such  description,  supplemented 
when  possible  by  pictures,  is  what  we  find  in 
"rogues'  galleries,"  in  passports,  architect's 
specifications,  and  in  the  enticements  of  the  bar- 
gain sale.  More  artistically,  as  is  said,  we  find 
enumerative  description  attempting  to  combine 
individual  with  representative  pictures;  thus 
Scott,  in  the  opening  chapters  of  Ivanhoe  and  the 
Talisman,  presents  formal  and  representative 
scenes  and  groups  of  people.  Thus  the  particular 
advertisement  may  be  typical  of  the  "renown 
and  integrity"  for  which  the  house  has  always 


DESCRIPTION  91 

stood.  In  any  event,  the  essence  of  this  method 
of  description  is  the  singling  out,  from  masses  of 
what  might  be  seen  and  said,  the  more  strik- 
ing and  apposite  characteristics.  The  method 
is  analytical. 

When  it  comes  to  putting  the  various  selected 
characteristics  together,  method  and  order  have 
a  good  deal  to  do  with  the  result.  The  simplest 
method  may  be  to  go  from  position  to  position 
—  from  head  to  foot  or  from  foot  to  head,  from 
west  to  east  or  from  east  to  west.  Or,  as  in  an 
architect's  specifications,  it  may  be  to  go  from 
one  group  of  like  objects  to  another  group  of 
objects  of  one  general  class,  as  window  sash, 
piping,  metal  work,  etc.  Or,  again,  when  there 
is  a  very  extensive  object  to  be  described,  an 
object  larger  than  can  be  seen  from  any  one  place, 
the  writer  may  conduct  the  reader  from  place  to 
place  in  the  field;  such  is  about  the  only  possible 
method  for  describing  a  country  (see  The  Ameri- 
can Civil  War  and  Canada  in  the  Home  Uni- 
versity Library).  Maps  are  doubtless  much 
better  for  this  kind  of  work  than  are  words;  but 
even  good  maps  usually  have  to  be  supplemented 
by  literary  devices  to  give  the  best  results. 
Where  maps  are  not  available  and  also  for 
strictly  literary  purposes,  the  fundamental  image 
is  a  great  help.  Thus  we  speak  of  the  heel  and 
toe  of  Italy,  and  Victor  Hugo,  in  the  classical 
instance,  likens  the  field  of  Waterloo  to  the 
letter  A.  All  this  is  simply  to  say  that  one 


92          WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

classifies  objects  and  arranges  his  resulting  groups 
according  to  a  plan  that  he  hopes  will  cover 
the  ground. 

Description,  however,  is  not  all  of  the  enu- 
merative  kind.  Thus,  instead  of  splitting  an  ob- 
ject into  little  pieces  and  playing  with  those  that 
are  to  the  purpose,  we  do  often  take  refuge  in 
very  general  terms,  contenting  ourselves  with 
an  adjective  or  two.  Good,  pretty,  fine,  may  satisfy 
most  of  us  in  describing  food,  babies,  and  the 
weather,  or  what  not;  so,  too,  in  a  way  that  we 
have  grown  used  to  regarding  as  very  fine, 
Homer  was  content  with  cow-eyed,  wine-dark, 
swift-footed,  and  like  epithets,  or  Keats  speaks 
of  mellow  fruitfulness,  teeming  brain,  alien  corn, 
gusty  floor,  and  many  other  now  celebrated 
objects.  The  success  of  such  epithets  depends 
on  their  association  or  on  their  suggestiveness. 
General  association  is  the  current  acceptance  of 
a  word,  as  when  nice,  theoretically  as  vague 
as  can  be,  comes  to  stand  for  something  intel- 
ligible when  applied  to  people.  Suggestiveness 
rather  betokens  an  original  and  happy  vigor  of 
phrase,  which  is  the  condition  of  good  poetry. 
Association  probably  reaches  its  height  in  the 
epithets  of  Gray's  Elegy,  though  there  may  be 
some  objection,  on  historical  grounds,  to  this 
assertion.  In  Shakespeare  we  are  commonly 
thought  to  find  suggestiveness  at  its  noblest. 
In  any  event  happy  descriptive  phrases  tend  to 
become  familiar,  and  stock. 


DESCRIPTION  93 

The  suggestive  method  of  description  appears 
not  only  in  single  words  or  longer  phrases;  it 
is  also  a  method  used  at  some  length.  One  may, 
without  enumerating  details,  manage  to  say 
a  good  deal  about  a  subject.  Thus  one  finds 
descriptive  panegyric,  like  Pater's  rhapsody  on 
La  Gioconda,  or  Burke's  lament  over  the  decay 
of  chivalry,  or  Carlyle's  apostrophe  to  the  "even- 
ing sun  of  July."  These  descriptions  do  not 
attempt  to  be  clear  and  precise;  rather  they  try 
to  fill  us  with  feelings,  that  we  may  feel  as  doubt- 
less the  writer  felt.  They  are  hardly  to  be  ana- 
lyzed, and  such  methods  are  best  unattempted 
by  amateurs.  When  without  a  genuine  and  con- 
tagious "glow"  they  are  flat  and  bombastic. 

As  has  been  said,  the  tendency  in  literature  is 
to  use  less  and  less  formal  description.  Modern 
men  of  letters  may  have  a  better  sense  of  how 
much  description  readers  will  stand  than  had 
the  generations  somewhat  earlier,  or,  to  put  the 
matter  differently,  description  is  likely  now-a- 
days  to  be  used  only  in  so  far  as  it  may  maintain 
other  kinds  of  writing.  Thus  we  find  Stevenson, 
say,  introducing  description  bit  by  bit  as  called 
for;  the  more  formal  and  isolated  descriptions 
of  Scott,  Bulwer,  G.  P.  R.  James,  Hawthorne, 
and  others,  are  not  so  fashionable  to-day.  The 
reason,  however,  lies  deeper  than  fashion:  if, 
as  we  have  observed,  description  for  all  practical 
purposes  deals  with  what  the  reader  has  not 
seen  or  felt,  a  writer  has  to  be  chary  of  dwelling 


94          WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

on  the  obvious  or  of  introducing  even  very  inter- 
esting pictures  when  the  reader  is  in  tune  for 
something  else.  Consider,  for  example,  the  te- 
diousness  to  the  modern  reader  of  the  digressive 
descriptions  in  The  Marble  Faun:  doubtless  en- 
thralling in  their  day,  they  are  now,  since  the 
subjects  have  been  "done"  hundreds  of  times, 
interesting  rather  as  data  for  Culturgeschichte 
than  as  readable  matter*  Hence  literary  ar- 
tists are  probably  inclined  to  under-describe; 
they  practise  a  rapid  rather  than  a  detailed 
method.  Again  they  are  likely  to  introduce 
pictures  from  a  pretty  definite  point  of  view, 
that  is  to  say,  as  objects  would  have  appeared 
to  a  particular  person,  at  a  particular  time,  in  a 
particular  mood.  Since  Scott  has  been  cited  as 
a  writer  of  formal  descriptions  which  many 
moderns  find  not  to  their  liking,  it  may  be  re- 
marked that  he  was  also  the  master  of  description 
in  the  most  skilful  modern  sort.  Nothing,  for 
example,  is  more  finished  than  the  picture  of  the 
entrance  of  the  Disinherited  Knight  into  the 
lists  at  Ashby  (Ivanhoe)  which  is  as  closely  knit 
into  the  story,  as  good  in  movement,  as  clear  in 
point  of  view,  as  the  most  exacting  of  modern 
readers  could  wish.  The  final  achievement  of 
description  is,  obviously,  to  combine  such  good 
movement  with  weight  of  matter.  But  weight 
of  matter  belongs  to  the  gifted  mind  or  the  great 
occasion,  and  is  outside  of  the  subject  of  this 
book.  > 


EXPOSITION  95 

The  foregoing  discussion  of  narration  and 
description  may  seem  to  be  somewhat  remote; 
for  few  of  us  are  professional  writers  and  have 
little  inclination  to  become  literary  artists.  For 
the  most  part,  we  have  occasion  only,  in  letters 
and  other  small  papers,  to  give  some  information 
about  a  few  happenings  and  some  objects.  The 
general  principles,  however,  apply  to  any  act 
of  narration  or  description;  and  they  are  some- 
what more  evident  in  novels,  stories,  and  his- 
tories than  elsewhere.  The  main  fact  is  that  in 
any  composition  of  the  kind  that  has  been  de- 
scribed in  this  chapter,  you  should  try  to  go  from 
event  to  event  or  from  object  to  object  in  an 
orderly  way,  omitting  such  matter  as  may  not 
concern  the  subject  or  be  interesting  to  the 
reader;  to  the  end,  not  that  he  may  be  neces- 
sarily enthralled  or  "gripped,"  or  have  a  "new 
note"  sounded  in  his  soul,  but  usually  that  he 
may  know  what  has  happened  or  what  certain 
things  are  like. 


EXPOSITION,  though  theoretically  dealing  with 
facts  of  a  different  kind  from  those  that  are 
the  delight  of  description  and  narration,  may 
most  conveniently  be  treated  with  these  forms. 
Exposition  is  best  understood  as  all  explana- 
tion that  is  mainly  not  narration  or  description 
or  argumentation.  In  exposition  you  do  not 
explain  for  the  sake  of  telling  a  story,  but  you 


96         WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

may  tell  a  story  to  explain  something  else.  You 
do  not  describe  a  thing  merely  to  make  its  ap- 
pearance clear;  you  make  its  appearance  clear 
that  something  else,  —  say  the  general  and 
constant  facts  rather  than  individual  differences, 
—  may  be  better  explained.  You  do  not  try  to 
set  up  new  beliefs  or  instigate  a  new  line  of  con- 
duct in  the  reader;  rather,  you  present  facts  and 
theories  and  lines  of  conduct,  and  allow  the  reader 
to  act  on  them  in  any  way  that  he  may  choose 
or  not  act  at  all.  Theoretically,  exposition  states 
and  explains  any  facts  or  relations  between  facts; 
practically,  one  does  not  explain  what  one  has 
reason  to  believe  his  reader  already  knows.  In 
other  words,  we  do  not  go  to  encyclopedias,  or 
spelling-books,  or  cook-books,  or  blue-books, 
or  agricultural  journals,  or  railway  time-tables, 
for  what  we  know,  or  think  we  know,  already. 

Being  of  this  very  practical,  and  often  of  this 
very  dry,  nature,  exposition  has  far  less  need 
for  literary  devices  than  other  of  the  so-called 
forms  of  discourse.  So  far  as  exposition  is  clear 
it  is  likely  to  be  effective,  and  tricks  for  trapping 
attention  do  not  have  much  place  where  men 
will  read  only  on  compulsion,  or  because  the  facts 
and  theories  are  engaging,  or  in  response  to  some 
real  curiosity,  or  because  of  the  allurement  of 
a  well-known  name.  To  be  sure,  a  good  expounder 
will  do  things  to  put  his  readers  more  at  their 
ease  or  to  make  them  more  attentive;  he  may 
upset  a  normal  order  or  use  striking  phraseology, 


EXPOSITION  97 

illustrations,  and  comparisons.  But  in  exposition 
you  mainly  follow  the  facts,  as  a  good  hound 
follows  the  quarry,  or  an  agile  end-rush,  the 
ball.  Hence  an  account  of  exposition  is  an  ac- 
count of  the  kinds  of  facts  to  be  presented  and 
of  the  classification  of  these  facts.  These  two 
matters  may  be  treated  separately. 

A  good  many  attempts  have  been  made  in 
treatises  on  exposition  to  cover  all  possible  facts 
and  methods.  Such  attempts  are  commonly 
unsuccessful  for  the  reason  that  facts  are  con- 
tinually slipping  in  and  out  of  the  body  of  human 
knowledge,  and  methods  have  to  follow  the  facts. 
Possibly  the  best  way  of  making  the  matter 
clear  is  to  say  that  when  we  explain  anything, 
—  as  water,  or  the  workings  of  party  govern- 
ment, or  evolution,  or  what  we  think  of  college 
life,  or  China,  or  the  subway,  —  we  may  tell 
what  the  thing  is  or  what  it  does,  though  what 
it  is  often  appears  only  in  what  it  does.  In  the 
first  class,  exposition  may  be  regarded  as  an 
explanation  of  terms  and  ideas;  in  the  second, 
as  a  recounting  of  processes.  Thus  exposition 
is  a  matter  of  definitions  and  propositions,  and 
also  of  developments  and  processes.  Let  us 
briefly  consider  these  two  aspects. 

Proposition  is  probably  a  better  term  than 
definition,  for  the  reason  that  the  latter,  like 
classification,  suggests  something  dreadfully  scien- 
tific, with  genus,  differentia,  and  copula,  whereas 
the  term  proposition  may  be  readily  thought  of 


98         WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

as  a  simple  declarative  sentence.  Now,  a  defi- 
nition or  a  proposition  may  be  thought  of  as 
underlying  each  piece  of  exposition  or  each  major 
part  of  it.  Thus  the  proposition  underlying  this 
particular  part  of  the  present  chapter  is  that  we 
find  two  types  of  expository  material.  From  a 
strictly  expository  point  of  view,  my  business 
is  done  when  I  have  clearly  (as  I  trust)  explained 
what  the  sentence  means.  This  is  what  is  done 
in  almost  any  article  in  the  Encyclopedia  Britan- 
nica,  in  any  chapter  in  the  American  Common- 
wealthy  and  also  in  any  bit  of  thesis  writing  such 
as  Mr.  Chesterton's  characteristically  modest 
What  9s  Wrong  with  the  World?  or  the  entertaining 
prefaces  to  the  plays  of  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw. 
Frequently,  to  be  sure,  one  has  to  take  refuge 
in  a  vague  proposition  or  definition,  which  would 
fall  far  short  of  the  demands  of  formal  logic, 
as  for  example,  that  the  reasons  for  the  out- 
break were  "many  and  various,"  or  that  there  are 
two  kinds  of  mountain  railways,  or  that  lobster 
is  hurtful.  The  departure  from  the  strict  require- 
ments of  logical  definition  need,  however,  distress 
no  one,  provided  always  that  the  meaning  is 
explained  or  the  promise  made  good,  —  provided 
also  that  the  reader  is  not  killed  with  common- 
place. 

This  idea  of  underlying  definition  might  also 
be  made  to  apply  to  process  exposition,  and  we 
might  say,  "Bread-making  is  the  process  by 
which  flour,  yeast,  and  other  ingredients  are 


EXPOSITION  99 

converted  into  bread."  But  it  is  simpler  to  sepa- 
rate this  type  from  the  definitions,  conceiving 
the  presentation  of  such  facts  to  be  an  operation 
rather  than  a  status.  Thus  we  have  recipes, 
railway  guides,  books  on  embryology,  histories 
of  institutions,  and  that  vast  number  of  exposi- 
tions in  which  facts  bear  some  temporal  relation 
to  one  another. 

Classification  of  phenomena  would  seem  to  be 
the  peculiar  property  of  exposition  in  that  some 
grouping  of  facts  is  necessary,  though,  as  we 
have  seen  (Chap.  II),  classification  is  essential 
to  all  writing.  The  real  object  of  speaking  of 
two  types  of  exposition,  in  reality  somewhat 
doubtfully  to  be  separated,  is  to  show  more 
readily  how  classification  operates.  With  the 
definition  type,  the  important  words  stand  for 
the  main  groups,  and  each  of  these  words  has 
in  some  fullness  to  be  explained.  Thus  Aris- 
totle's definition  of  rhetoric  "as  a  faculty  of  dis- 
covering all  the  possible  means  of  persuasion 
in  any  subject,"  evidently  calls  for  complete 
explanation  of  faculty,  means,  persuasion,  and 
subject,  and  such  explanations  he  gives,  at  vary- 
ing length,  through  some  hundreds  of  pages. 
Means  is,  as  explained  in  detail,  by  far  the  most 
bulky  term,  and  it  consequently  has  to  be  divided 
and  subdivided.  How  these  smaller  groups 
should  be  arranged  cannot  be  told  here;  as  we 
have  seen,  order  depends  on  one's  conception  of 
the  facts  and  upon  one's  purpose.  A  good  prac- 


100        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

tice  is  to  examine  the  table  of  contents  of  any 
notable  piece  of  exposition,  which  is  merely  an 
index  to  the  grouping  of  the  facts. 

With  regard  to  the  other  type  of  exposition, 
processes  fall  into  more  or  less  real  or  artificial 
stages,  and  it  is  usual  to  arrange  them,  —  as 
in  the  process  of  digestion,  for  example,  or  of 
nail-making,  —  from  first  to  last.  Speaking 
thus,  we  must  bear  in  mind  that  many  processes 
have  no  definite  starting  point  other  than  what 
may  be  arbitrarily  selected.  Thus  blood  is  usu- 
ally represented  as  flowing  from  the  heart  back 
to  the  heart,  but,  since  the  stream  is  continuous, 
it  might  also  be  represented  as  flowing  from  the 
lungs  back  to  the  lungs,  or  as  making  the  cir- 
cuit from  the  capillaries;  and  it  is  as  a  matter 
of  fact  so  represented  in  special  pieces  of  expo- 
sition. Thus  Baedecker  begins  Switzerland  at 
Basel,  but  he  might  have  begun  it  at  Geneva  or 
Lugano,  had  he  wished,  and  very  likely  would 
have  done  so  had  the  majority  of  his  travelers 
entered  by  Geneva  or  Lugano,  or  had  he  been  a 
Frenchman  or  an  Italian  instead  of  a  German. 

It  is  exceedingly  important  to  remember  that, 
in  practice,  classification  is  usually  limited  rather 
than  encyclopedic.  One's  purpose,  modifying 
in  turn  the  point  of  view,  determines  the  groups 
into  which  expository  matter  usually  falls.  The 
encyclopedic  type,  theoretically,  tries  to  tell 
something  of  everything  about  a  subject;  the 
scientific  type  attempts  everything  or  something 


EXPOSITION  101 

with  the  greatest  possible  accuracy  of  division 
and  of  fact;  the  far  more  common  popular  type 
is  highly  occasional.  Exposition  is  a  very  prag- 
matic affair.  Thus  the  term  Switzerland  may 
variously  appear  as  a  highly  interesting  bit  of 
topography,  or  a  fine  example  of  certain  geo- 
logical phenomena,  or  as  a  complex  of  tourist 
routes  with  many  attractive  details,  or  as  a 
thrilling  episode  of  history,  or  as  the  typical 
home  of  the  "Alpine  man,"  or  as  an  exceedingly 
well  run  country,  or  as  a  congeries  of  hotels  and 
funiculars,  or  as  the  temporary  abode  of  many 
Englishmen,  or  as  a  region  where,  every  year, 
some  scores  of  incautious  people  break  their 
bones,  or  as  the  true  garden  of  edelweiss  and 
picture  post-cards,  and  in  many  other  ways,  all 
standing  for  some  part  or  aspect  of  truth.  These, 
as  occasion  demands  or  permits,  you  expound  as 
may  be  to  the  purpose,  —  encyclopedically,  on 
rare  occasions;  scientifically,  according  to  your 
knowledge  and  accuracy  and  certain  claims  of 
subject;  particularly,  in  response  to  special 
inquiry;  humorously,  if  you  are  so  inclined. 
When  you  can  use  some  time  order,  some  genuine 
first-second-third,  you  do  so  if  you  are  wise. 

That  is  the  whole  theory  of  exposition;  the 
rest  is  application.  In  general,  one  is  dealing 
less  with  events,  happenings,  and  appearances, 
than  with  statements,  theories,  principles,  con- 
stant facts,  all  of  which  may  be  expressed  by 
modification  of  the  formula,  "This  is  so"  or  "The 


10*        WHITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

facts  are  so  and  so."  Many  of  these  bodies  of 
fact  can  be  laid  out  in  stages  following  one 
another  as  parts  of  a  growth  or  process.  In  any 
event  some  classification  is  necessary.  The 
rhetorical  virtue  of  exposition  is  clearness.  That 
depends  largely  on  order,  but  it  may  be  furthered 
by  the  use  of  literary  illustration  and  comparisons, 
as  well  as  by  actual  maps  and  diagrams. 


CHAPTER  IV 

ARGUMENTATION 

ARGUMENTATION  may  be  conceived  of  as  a 
method  of  comparison,  but  here,  comparison  is 
not  merely,  as  in  exposition,  for  the  sake  of 
clearness,  but  for  the  sake  of  obtaining  a  new 
fact  or  set  of  facts.  Comparison  is  incidental  to 
exposition;  it  is  the  bone  and  marrow  of  argu- 
mentation. Narration,  description,  and  expo- 
sition may  treat  directly,  in  various  ways,  facts 
derived  from  observation  or  facts  of  record  or 
of  imagining,  but  argumentation  merely  uses 
these  facts  as  a  means  to  some  new  facts.  In  a 
sense  the  line  is  between  narration,  description, 
and  exposition,  on  the  one  hand,  in  that  they 
deal  with  what  is  known  and  observed  and  re- 
corded and  seen;  and  argumentation,  on  the 
other,  in  that  the  interest  of  the  latter  is  essen- 
tially in  facts  of  inference.  The  judgments  of 
argumentation  are  all  derived,  by  process  of 
comparison,  from  antecedent  facts,  and  these 
judgments,  or  conclusions,  may  themselves  be 
facts.  Thus  one  may  narrate  events,  or  describe 
appearances,  or  expound  definitions  and  proc- 
esses, but  if  at  any  time  there  should  arise  a 
103 


104        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

question  as  to  the  truth,  or  the  workability, 
or  the  goodness,  of  any  of  these  matters,  the 
argumentative  process  is  at  once  set  up.  If 
this  truth,  or  workability,  or  goodness,  be  the 
important  thing,  the  resulting  affair  is  called 
argumentation  rather  than  one  of  the  other  forms. 

Argumentation  is,  obviously,  a  very  common 
and  important  affair.  It  has  been  studied  more 
systematically  than  any  of  the  other  forms, 
particularly  in  our  own  times.  One  may  also 
note  that  Aristotle  really  approaches  the  subject 
of  rhetoric  from  the  argumentative  point  of 
view,  and,  in  modern  times,  such  books  as 
Whately's  Rhetoric  are  largely  restricted  to  argu- 
mentation. More  space  is  given  in  the  present 
book  to  the  subject  than  to  the  other  forms  of 
discourse,  chiefly  because  the  movement  is  of  an 
essentially  different  sort. 

Argumentation  follows  the  general  formula, 
"It  is  better"  or  "It  is  truer,"  the  comparative 
degree  of  the  adjective  stating  or  implying  a 
difference  of  judgment.  Such  a  comparative 
adjective  one  does  not  always  actually  find,  but 
comparison  is  always  implied.  Thus  the  ques- 
tion, "Shall  I  vote  for  the  Democratic  candidate?  " 
implies  that  I  may  do  other  things,  such  as  vot- 
ing the  Progressive  ticket  or  staying  away  from 
the  polls,  among  all  of  which  a  choice  is  to  be 
made.  "You  ought,  or  ought  not,  to  do  thus 
and  so"  implies  a  comparison  of  possible  lines  of 
conduct.  "The  Insurance  Act  is  unjust"  means 


ARGUMENTATION  105 

that,  in  the  opinion  of  the  speaker,  the  act  does 
not  match  so  well  with  notions  of  justice  or  work- 
ableness as  the  former  state  or  some  other  possible 
measure.  All  subjects  for  argumentation,  in 
short,  reduce  themselves  to  questions  or  state- 
ments like  the  foregoing,  in  all  of  which,  it  must 
be  observed,  there  is  an  actual  or  an  implied 
difference  of  opinion. 

Some  further  remarks  must  be  made  before 
we  are  in  a  position  to  deal  with  argumentative 
structure.  The  comparisons  of  argumentation, 
like  the  classifications  of  exposition,  may  be 
made  between  all  possible  differences  of  opinion 
or  of  fact;  they  may  contemplate  questions  in 
all  their  logical  possibilities,  and  may  be  an 
examination  of  all  theories  and  facts.  But  prac- 
tically argumentation  is  much  limited  by  occa- 
sions; it  is  very  likely  to  start  in  some  immediate 
call  or  in  response  to  some  reaction.  Arguments 
are  much  more  likely  to  proceed  from  something 
than  to  be  cut  out  of  whole  cloth.  Argumentation 
is  likely,  in  short,  to  deal  with  "live"  hypotheses 
of  whatever  class.  Unless  there  is  reasonable 
doubt  or  actual  difference  of  opinion,  argumen- 
tation is  not  likely  to  arise.  Live  questions  are 
those  in  which  people  are  interested,  or  which 
may  properly  be  propounded  at  any  time.  Thus 
the  nursery  is  full  of  live  questions,  as  are  also 
Parliament,  Congress,  the  Press,  and  the  scien- 
tific laboratory.  Thus  any  question  may  at 
any  time  be  brought  into  the  arena,  but  it  is 


106        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

probably  trivial  to  ask  whether  the  moon  is 
made  of  green  cheese,  and  many  questions  are 
outlawed  from  even  personal  discussion  by  rea- 
son of  being  of  a  wholly  inconclusive  or  of  a 
trifling  nature. 

Again,  argumentation,  though  often  conceived 
as  a  minister  of  truth,  is  quite  as  likely,  in  prac- 
tice, to  serve  more  mundane  ends,  not  always  of 
a  high  character.  Thus  the  skill  of  the  auc- 
tioneer in  persuading  you  to  buy  something  that 
you  do  not  want,  or  the  "possible  means  of  per- 
suasion" used  by  the  blackmailer,  are  no  less 
argumentation,  in  a  broad  sense,  than  the  elabo- 
rate and  varied  reasons  and  copious  evidence 
going  to  support  the  oft-cited  Darwinian  hy- 
pothesis. The  types  differ  totally  in  outlook, 
motive,  and  spirit,  but  all  aim  to  arrive  at  some 
belief  or  conduct,  from  the  comparison  of  divers 
facts  and  possible  lines  of  action. 

Argumentative  subjects  are  usually  conven- 
tionalized into  the  form  of  propositions,  that  is, 
simple  declarative  sentences,  in  which  something 
is  predicated  or  said  of  the  matter  to  be  dis- 
cussed. Examples  are,  "Luther  was  responsible 
for  the  Peasants'  Revolt,"  "War  is  hell,"  "It 
will  rain  to-morrow."  Such  propositions  may 
evidently  be  put  in  the  form  of  questions,  and 
are  often  so  put,  when  it  is  desirable  not  to  be  too 
positive  at  the  outset.  In  either  case  the  argu- 
mentative process  would  be  essentially  the  same. 
Now  it  is  very  important  to  note  that  the  prop- 


ARGUMENTATION  107 

ositions  are  not  quite  the  same  kind  of  thing  as 
the  propositions  or  definitions  that  we  conceived 
as  underlying  exposition.  There,  the  simple 
declarative  sentence  was,  "It  is  so,"  or  "The 
facts  are  these,"  or  "The  theory  is  as  follows," 
whereas  the  argumentative  proposition  turns  the 
so,  these,  and  as  follows  into  terms  regarding 
which  there  is  some  difference  of  opinion  and  a 
need  of  arriving  at  another  fact,  which  is  called 
a  conclusion.  This  conclusion  is,  in  argumen- 
tation, the  important  part  of  the  matter;  in 
exposition,  the  facts  are  the  important  thing. 
In  more  technical  language,  exposition  explains 
terms;  argumentation  attempts  to  establish 
propositions. 

These  propositions,  furthermore,  are  not  the 
same  thing  as  what  shows  them  to  be  true  or 
false,  tenable  or  dubious.  They  are  rather  real 
conclusions,  of  whatever  kind,  from  facts,  of 
whatever  kind.  Hence  argumentation  has  a 
great  deal  to  do  with  these  foregoing  facts  on 
which  the  conclusions  are  based.  These  fore- 
going facts  are  called  evidence.  Without  evi- 
dence, in  this  sense,  there  can  be  no  argumen- 
tation; otherwise,  one  has  to  rest  on  assertion, 
and  this  we  ought  to  do  only  when  we  have 
further  good  reasons,  or  evidence,  that  there  are 
facts  in  support  of  the  say-so  that  we  accept. 
Confidence  in  authority,  —  as  in  blue-books, 
government  reports,  newspaper  opinion,  the  word 
of  a  statesman,  —  is  therefore  one  common  kind 


108       WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

of  evidence  for  our  beliefs;  but  such  evidence  is 
always  open  to  question  and  is  often  actually 
questioned  in  more  ways  than  can  be  enumerated 
here.  We  are  all  familiar  with  various  aspects 
of  the  conflict  between  evidence  and  authority. 
Scientifically,  we  demand  the  most  scrupulous 
care  in  testing  evidence  or  fact,  and  in  legal  pro- 
cedure special  rules  have  been  evolved  for  the 
acceptance  of  evidence  and  the  evaluation  of 
testimony.  Popularly,  many  other  things  — 
fears,  desires,  interests,  education,  prejudice, 
natural  conservatism,  temperament,  faith,  hope, 
charity,  and  the  like,  count  for  us  as  evidence,  or 
fact,  in  determining  belief  or  in  palliating  or 
condemning  conduct.  The  more  rationally  we 
live,  however,  the  more  we  try  to  substitute  for 
the  evidence  of  desire  and  temperament,  the 
evidence  derived  from  science,  ethics,  philosophy, 
and  all  the  richness  of  individual  and  national 
experience.  Space  does  not  permit  further  en- 
trance into  this  enormous  subject  of  evidence. 
A  writer  may  have  good  evidence  and  yet  may 
be  unable  to  use  it  in  the  production  of  those 
new  facts  essential  to  argument.  To  put  the 
matter  differently,  one  must  not  only  have  facts 
but  must  be  able  from  them  to  draw  conclusions 
of  a  right  sort.  Another  great  essential  in  argu- 
mentation is,  therefore,  the  right  application  of 
facts  to  conclusions,  and  this  application  of  ante- 
cedent facts  to  derived  facts  is  logic.  In  order  to 
understand  the  use  of  logic  in  argumentation  one 


ARGUMENTATION  109 

should  note  that  the  human  mind  is  in  various 
ways  continually  on  the  jump  from  one  fact  to 
another.  Most  of  the  derived  facts  are  prob- 
ably not  worthy  of  decent  burial,  but  they  are 
still  numberless.  Thus,  as  I  write  these  lines, 
rain  is  falling  briskly,  and  I  may  remark  that  it 
rains  a  great  deal  in  this  country,  or  that  the 
river  will  be  swollen  to-morrow,  or  that  the 
phenomenon  of  condensation  is  occurring  in  a 
moisture-laden  atmosphere  with  resulting  pre- 
cipitation, or  I  may  add  a  great  many  equally 
intelligible  and  pompous  things.  The  only  fact 
that  I  directly  observe  is  the  falling  of  the  rain- 
drops. Even  this  fact  I  might  derive  from  some 
other  fact,  as  the  appearance  of  people  with 
umbrellas,  or  the  sensation  of  pain  in  my  right 
leg.  In  this  manner  fact  goes  on  begetting  fact: 
one  fact  may  be  (1)  the  example  of  another  fact, 
as  in  the  first  of  the  foregoing  inferences,  or  (2) 
the  cause  of  another  fact,  as  in  the  swelling  of 
the  river,  or  (3)  the  sign  of  another  fact,  as  in 
the  third  instance  above.  Any  of  these  facts 
may  be  just  as  true  as  the  original  observation 
that  it  rains,  provided  that  they  are  all  properly 
applied  to  one  another.  Much  of  that  applica- 
tion is  merely  a  matter  of  memory,  or  custom, 
or  erudition,  but  the  science  of  the  correct  appli- 
cation of  fact  to  fact  is  logic,  and  it  is  as  essential 
to  argumentation  as  anything  can  be.  Logic 
was,  of  course,  a  human  practice  and  household 
necessity  long  before  it  was  a  formal  study,  but 


110       WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

formal  logic  is  of  much  value  in  purifying  a  proc- 
ess that  is  as  common  as  breathing.  It  is  the 
oxygen  of  argumentation. 

The  process  of  purification  is  best  studied,  for 
the  purposes  of  argumentation,  in  the  fallacies. 
Fallacy  is  incorrect  reasoning,  or,  in  simpler 
words,  failure  of  facts  to  apply  to  other  facts 
which  we  would  fain  have  them  engender.  Thus, 
in  the  instances  cited  above,  (1)  I  have  been  in 
this  country  only  two  days  and  am  therefore 
in  no  position  to  jump  from  my  present  obser- 
vation of  rain  to  the  general  conclusion  of  much 
rain  here;  I  have  taken  an  isolated  fact  as  if  it 
were  representative  of  a  general  condition,  when 
the  truth  is  that  I  really  don't  know  whether  there 
is  much  rain  here  or  not:  I  merely  know  that 
rain  is  now  falling.  (2)  It  is  pretty  safe  prophecy 
that  the  river  will  rise,  for  there  is  another  fact 
to  go  by,  namely,  the  common  effect  of  adding 
water  to  water.  (3)  Presumably  the  rain  is  a 
sign  that  something  else  is  happening  or  is  the 
cause  of  the  rain,  and  that  something  else  is 
expressed  in  the  formal  language  used  in  the 
preceding  paragraph.  If,  however,  I  had  said 
that  the  rain  is  evidently  a  sign  of  the  precip- 
itation of  moisture,  I  should  not  have  added 
any  new  fact,  but  should  merely  be  repeating 
the  old  idea  in  other  words.  Thus,  in  the  classic 
instance : 

"  Bardolph.  Sir,  pardon;  a  soldier  is  better 
accommodated  than  with  a  wife." 


ARGUMENTATION  111 

"  Shallow.  It  is  well  said,  in  faith,  sir;  and  it  is 
well  said  indeed  too.  Better  accommodated! 
It  is  good;  yea,  indeed,  is  it:  good  phrases  are 
surely,  and  ever  were,  very  commendable.  Ac- 
commodated! it  comes  of  'accommodo':  very 
good;  a  good  phrase." 

"  Bardolph.  Pardon  me,  sir;  I  have  heard  the 
word.  Phrase  call  you  it?  by  this  good  day,  I 
know  not  the  phrase;  but  I  will  maintain  the 
word  with  my  sword  to  be  a  soldier-like  word, 
and  a  word  of  exceeding  good  command,  by 
heaven.  Accommodated;  that  is,  when  a  man 
is,  as  they  say,  accommodated;  or  when  a  man 
is,  being,  whereby  a'  may  be  thought  to  be  ac- 
commodated; which  is  an  excellent  thing." 

" Shallow.   Itisveryjust"—(IIHenryIV.iii. 2.) 

Though  space  does  not  permit  a  full  account  of 
fallacies,  it  may  be  remarked  that  few  fallacies 
are  commoner  than  this  variation  of  words  with- 
out change  of  facts.  This  fallacy  vitiates  the 
very  essence  of  argumentative  composition;  for 
argumentative  movement  goes  from  facts  to 
consequences  different  from  the  facts.  Other 
well-known  fallacies  are:  "begging  the  question," 
where  the  conclusion  is  wittingly  or  unwittingly 
assumed  in  the  manner  of  stating  the  antecedent 
facts;  the  post  hoc,  ergo  propter  hoc  fallacy,  where 
things  following  each  other  in  time  are  assumed 
to  have  some  causal  relation,  the  substantiation 
of  which  depends  on  a  correct  application  of 
still  other  facts,  —  a  very  common  fallacy;  the 


WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

false  analogy,  where  things  alike  in  known  re- 
spects are  wrongly  assumed  to  apply  to  one 
another  in  the  unknown  items;  the  false  example, 
as  in  (1)  above,  humanly  to  be  called  the  fallacy 
of  impatience;  the  false  use  of  sign,  as  when 
we  reason  from  symptoms  of  any  kind  —  ex- 
pression, action,  color,  etc.,  —  to  causes,  motives, 
and  a  variety  of  other  things,  rather  in  accord 
with  predilection  than  sound  induction;  "argu- 
ing beside  the  point";  and  a  great  many  others. 
These  fallacies  arise  when  the  facts  and  the  al- 
leged conclusions  are  really  the  same,  —  in 
consequence  of  which  there  is  no  movement; — or 
when  the  facts  do  not  apply,  without  further 
evidence  and  reasoning,  to  the  conclusion,  — 
in  which  case  the  movement  is  illogical.  For, 
as  we  have  seen,  the  essence  of  argumentative 
movement  is  the  production  of  new  facts.  The 
movement  may  fail,  because  no  new  facts,  even 
of  a  negative  kind,  are  derived,  or  because  the 
conclusions  do  not  follow  from  the  premises. 

It  will  now  be  evident  that  good  argumenta- 
tive movement  depends  very  much  on  clear 
conception  and  clear  exposition.  In  other  words, 
it  is  of  high  importance  to  know  what  one  is 
talking  about,  to  know  what  facts  are  in  his 
mind,  to  know  what  his  conclusions  are,  to  know 
how  the  gaps  from  premise  to  conclusion  are 
bridged.  Hence  the  success  of  argumentative 
structure  is  likely  to  depend  not  only  on  evidence 
and  logic  but  also  on  definition.  Here  the  only 


ARGUMENTATION  113 

rule  is  to  make  clear,  by  whatever  means,  the 
sense  of  the  terms  one  is  using,  that  is,  the  mean- 
ing of  the  facts  and  ideas.  Obviously  this  is 
an  affair  of  varying  difficulty.  The  proposition 
"collarless  dogs  should  be  shot,"  is  not  hard  to 
define,  unless  the  question  of  the  agency  should 
arise.  "The  Tariff  Bill  of  1909  was  a  party  meas- 
ure," allows  us  to  define  the  first  term  by  refer- 
ence to  the  provisions  of  the  act,  and  "party 
measure"  is  not  difficult.  But  terms  like  "prog- 
ress," "  civilization,"  "  socialism,"  trippingly 
household  words  though  they  are,  are  rarely 
matters  of  record  or  of  uniform  conception.  Hence 
they  may  require  a  deal  of  definition  and  of  re- 
peated exposition  at  various  times,  since  common 
conceptions  of  such  terms  are  constantly  changing. 
Hence  laws  and  statutes  tend  to  be  specific  and 
particular,  and  good  expounders  are  always  care- 
ful to  define  terms.  Definition,  then,  along  with 
propositions,  evidence,  and  logic,  may  be  regarded 
as  one  of  the  essentials  of  argumentation.  Argu- 
mentation cannot  move  without  the  substance 
of  which  propositions  are  made,  and  without 
some  kind  of  evidence,  it  cannot  move  correctly 
without  logic;  it  cannot  move  clearly  without 
definition.  That  it  should  move  somehow  is  the 
primary  condition  of  this,  as  of  all  forms  of  liter- 
ary composition. 

We  are  now  in  a  position  to  suggest  a  formula 
for  argumentative  structure  or  movement.  It 
is  essentially  an  exposition  of  the  reasons  for 


114        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

belief  or  conduct.  More  specifically,  but  still 
roughly,  it  is  (1)  a  statement  of  two  or  more 
opposing  views  or  lines  of  action,  with  such 
definition  of  each  as  may  be  necessary,  (2)  a 
pronouncement  of  the  better  cause,  and  (3) 
an  exposition  of  the  reasons  for  that  conclusion. 
This  formula  we  do  very  commonly  follow,  as 
in  the  familiar  model,  "You  might  do  this  or 
you  might  do  that,  but  I  think  that  you  had 
better  do  this,  because,"  or  as  in  the  two  sides 
of  a  legal  process  and  the  ensuing  decision  by 
judge  or  jury.  Or  we  follow  it  partly,  with  an 
implication  of  the  alternative,  "You  ought  to 
go  for  various  reasons."  Or  we  follow  it  with 
very  much  bob-tailing,  leaving  our  listeners  to 
guess  at  our  reasons,  as  in  the  common  "I  will 
not."  Argumentation,  whether  a  matter  of  two 
seconds'  talk,  or  of  the  trial  of  Warren  Hastings, 
or  of  the  acceptance  of  the  belief  that  the  earth 
is  round,  may  not  unhandily  be  conceived  as  the 
formula  of  comparisons  that  has  been  described. 
Certain  minor  matters  of  convenience  may  be 
mentioned.  Things  may  be  deemed  to  be  true 
either  because  of  good  evidence  for  them  or 
because  allegations  against  them  are  false  or 
irrelevant.  The  former  of  these  matters  is  called 
direct  proof,  the  latter,  refutation.  Structurally, 
it  may  be  convenient  to  keep  these  apart;  and 
according  to  principles  of  climax  or  effect  or  the 
nature  of  the  subject,  direct  proof  may  proceed 
or  follow  refutation.  Refutation,  again,  may  be 


ARGUMENTATION  115 

general  or  local;  that  is,  it  may  be  concerned 
with  general  falsity,  or  may  try  to  dispose  of 
particular  objections  as  they  arise.  Again,  in  a 
large  number  of  pieces  that  may  be  called  argu- 
mentation rather  than  anything  else,  opposing 
reasons  appear  simply  as  texts,  or  pretexts,  or 
points  of  departure,  on  which  to  hang  one's  own 
chain  of  reasoning.  Many  essays  are  of  this  type, 
and  here  exposition  and  argumentation  may 
walk  hand  in  hand. 

As  in  exposition,  the  structure  of  argumen- 
tation may  be  thought  of  as  falling  into  certain 
types,  depending  on  the  kind  of  facts  with  which 
one  is  dealing.  Hence  the  simple  formula  out- 
lined above  may  be  much  modified.  The  reader 
will  at  once  recognize  two  great  obvious  classes: 
the  "What  did  happen?"  or  "What  are  the 
facts?"  class,  and  the  type  corresponding  to 
"What  will  happen?"  or  "What  will  be  the 
result?"  The  first  is  largely  determined  by  the 
examination  of  actual  records  and  is  concerned 
with  the  correct  interpretation  of  them;  this 
type  has  to  do  with  history  and  science  in  many 
departments,  and  with  questions  of  personal 
and  political  veracity,  and  many  other  things. 
The  second  class  is  determined  by  inferences 
from  past  and  present  experiences;  it  has  to  do 
with  plans,  policies,  prophecies,  prognostica- 
tions, and  all  that  great  group  where  inference 
is  made  in  anticipation  of  actual  events.  This 
last  appears  in  both  positive  and  negative  forms, 


116       WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

whenever  practical  matters  are  under  discussion: 
the  present  way  should  be  kept  up  into  the  future, 
since  it  cannot  be  improved,  —  that  is  the  con- 
servative, or,  vulgarly,  "stand-patter,"  program; 
the  present  should  be  modified  for  the  sake  of 
the  future;  —  that  is  the  radical  or  progressive 
formula.  In  both  cases  the  near  or  the  distant 
future  is  in  contemplation.  Typical  instances 
of  historical  questions  are,  "Was  the  execution  of 
Louis  XVI  justifiable?"  "Did  Bacon  write  the 
plays  usually  attributed  to  Shakespeare?"  "Is 
the  Biblical  account  of  the  creation  sound?" 
and  other  masterly  examples  of  an  antique 
description.  "Futures"  are  naturally  more  lively 
and  common,  and  among  them  are  many  of  the 
bills  actually  before  Congress  and  Parliament, 
as  well  as  inquiries,  philosophical  and  scientific, 
as  to  the  future  of  the  universe  and  the  destiny 
of  man,  and  the  farmer's  concern  for  his 
crops. 

It  is  impossible  to  summarize  what  has  been, 
or  to  prognosticate  what  would  be,  the  possible 
variety  of  structure  in  these  various  questions, 
but  certain  specific  formulas  may  be  suggested, 
besides  the  general  arrangement  already  men- 
tioned. A  common  method  is  (1)  to  state  various 
hypotheses  and  (2)  to  determine  the  most  likely, 
acting  or  not,  as  may  be  fitting,  on  the  likeli- 
hood. Thus  the  farmer  acts  or  does  not  act,  on 
the  prospect  of  rain.  Thus  one  will  not  be  per- 
sonally concerned  with  the  clearly  demonstrated 


ARGUMENTATION  117 

fact  that  the  earth  will  come  to  an  end  in  one 
billion  odd  years;  the  coal  supply  is  more  pres- 
sing, but  most  of  us  don't  think  about  the  matter 
until  the  strike  is  on.  Though  an  historical  ques- 
tion, dealing  wholly  with  the  past,  cannot  turn 
a  hair  white  or  black  the  same  method  may  be 
applied.  This  method  of  greatest  probability 
may  be  used  in  arriving  at  all  kinds  of  conclu- 
sions. Sometimes  guess,  opinion,  and  fact  may 
be  so  analyzed  from  one  another,  to  the  advantage 
of  fact,  that  the  method  might  be  called  the 
method  of  elimination.  This  movement  is  likely 
to  proceed  by  exclusions. 

Another  formula  of  comparison  has  been  called 
the  method  of  functions.  The  operation  of  this 
method  is  (1)  to  establish  principles  or  standards 
or  functions,  and  (2)  to  test  any  active  proposi- 
tion in  the  light  of  these.  Burke  delighted  in 
the  method,  and  often  employed  it  with  an  effect 
that  would  have  been  telling  had  he  had  suffi- 
cient supporters.  It  is  probably  the  conservative 
formula,  par  excellence,  in  all  countries  and  on 
all  active  subjects.  When  an  action  or  a  policy 
Is  declared  to  be  unconstitutional,  or  illegal,  or 
vicious,  formulas  of  this  description  are  applied 
in  various  disguises.  The  "laws"  and  fashions 
and  standards  of  rhetoric  or  dress  or  behavior 
are  often  invoked  under  this  formula.  Thus, 
again,  we  imply  standards  of  moderation  when 
we  urge  our  friends  to  avoid  noisiness  and  glut- 
tony. The  formula  may  also  be  urged  in  arguing 


118        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

against  the  continuance  of  practices  and  insti- 
tutions which  have  not  come  up  to  expectation 
or  have  outlived  their  usefulness.  Mill  so  uses 
it  in  the  essay  On  Liberty,  but  the  formula  is 
mainly  restraining  rather  than  reforming. 

In  such  cases  as  the  last,  however,  a  different 
formula  is  likely  to  be  more  convenient.  This 
may  be  called  the  method  of  objections,  a  name 
devised,  like  the  method  of  functions,  by  Mr. 
R.  C.  Ringwalt,  an  authority  on  argumentative 
structure.  This  is,  on  the  whole,  a  formula  of 
attack,  of  progress,  of  revolution,  of  liberalism, 
of  reform.  According  to  it  (1)  objections  to  any 
existing  institution  are  stated  and  a  remedy 
proposed.  The  questions  then  arise  (2)  as  to 
whether  the  objections  are  sound  or  unsound, 
and  (3)  if  so,  whether  the  substitute  would  do 
away  with  them,  without  (4)  introducing  greater 
evil.  The  method,  like  the  others,  is  capable  of 
much  modification  and  refinement.  And  if 
some  orators  lay  more  stress  on  (1)  than  on  (2), 
(3),  and  (4),  the  formula  is  no  less  there. 

These  methods  may  also  be  variously  combined, 
but  representing  as  they  do  pretty  distinct 
general  arrangements  for  argumentative  com- 
parisons, one  or  another  is  likely  to  be  domi- 
nant in  most  questions  that  have  to  be  treated 
with  any  formality.  One  must  bear  in  mind  that 
these  formulas  do  not  take  the  place  of  defini- 
tion, evidence,  and  logic.  They  rather  typify 
certain  familiar  ways  in  which  the  comparisons 


ARGUMENTATION  119 

indispensable   to   argumentation  may  be   more 
clearly  made. 

Briefly  to  sum  up  the  view  of  composition  that 
has  been  held  in  the  preceding  chapters,  writing 
attempts  to  present  in  more  or  less  detail  the 
facts  related  to  a  subject,  or  it  molds  those  facts 
to  special  purposes.  Though  these  two  func- 
tions cannot  be  wholly  separated,  the  very 
nature  of  language  ordains  movement  of  some 
kind  —  the  writer  must  get  from  one  point  to 
another.  Facts,  the  relation  of  facts  to  one 
another,  and  the  use  that  is  made  of  them, 
vary  very  vastly,  but  the  important  question 
in  literary  composition,  the  question  of  move- 
ment, can  best  be  studied  by  the  division  of 
writing  into  four  types,  not  distinct  by  any 
hard  and  fast  line,  but  separated  by  the  kind  of 
treatment  accorded  to  different  classes  of  fact. 
Narration,  on  the  whole,  goes  from  event  to 
event,  moving  through  a  complex  of  temporal 
relations,  and  also  uniting  events  by  any  other 
means  that  may  be  available.  Description 
moves  from  object  to  object,  keeping  to  some 
order,  which  is  usually  spacial,  but  may  also 
be  often  a  matter  of  time  relation.  Exposition 
goes  from  fact  to  fact,  or  from  fact  to  idea,  or 
from  idea  to  fact,  or  from  idea  to  idea,  sometimes 
simply  stating  matters,  at  other  times  dealing 
with  complicated  causal  and  temporal  relations. 
Argumentation  is  the  great  begetter  of  derived 
facts,  the  Solomon  among  the  literary  methods; 


120       WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

by  a  system  of  comparisons  it  makes  new  facts; 
it  does  not  do  its  business  if  it  makes  no  conclu- 
sion, even  if  the  conclusion  is  that  no  conclusion 
is  possible.  For  all  these  forms  some  stereo- 
typed methods  exist.  They  are  of  great  useful- 
ness, but  new  methods  are  constantly  being  found. 
Of  all  the  structural  units  of  composition  — 
books,  parts,  chapters,  sections,  and  paragraphs 
—  the  last  most  merit  detailed  study  as  a  means 
of  furthering  movement,  and  to  them  we  will 
now  turn. 


CHAPTER  V 

PARAGRAPHS 

PARAGRAPHS  furnish  a  fertile  field  for  theory, 
and  for  this  there  is  good  reason.  If  paragraphs 
were  the  same  as  sections  or  chapters  or  books, 
on  the  one  hand,  or,  on  the  other,  as  sentences, 
there  would  be  no  good  excuse  for  these  units  of 
discourse,  which  we  superficially  recognize  on  a 
printed  page  by  indentations  and  spacing.  But 
there  are  millions  of  these  things,  some  of  them 
forming  whole  compositions,  more  of  them, 
probably,  being  but  parts  of  longer  pieces  of  work. 
They  do  not  average  so  long  as  they  used  to  some 
three  hundred  years  ago;  but  if  we  find  them  so 
short  as  in,  say,  some  of  Victor  Hugo's  romances 
or  in  the  editorials  of  the  New  York  Journal, 
many  of  us  are  likely  to  be  annoyed.  To  call 
paragraphs  "compositions  in  miniature,"  or 
to  say  that  they  are  to  sentences  what  sentences 
are  to  words,  is  unsatisfactory  and  misleading; 
for  evidently  some  of  them  are  complete  compo- 
sitions and  some  are  not;  and,  again,  there  can 
be  no  such  syntax  of  sentences  in  paragraphs 
as  of  words  in  sentences.  Paragraphs  may  be 
regarded,  if  one  wishes  so  to  regard  them,  as 
121 


WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

congeries  of  sentences;  that  is,  they  may  be 
analyzed  as  a  series  of  sentence  relations.  That 
aspect  of  the  matter  will  be  discussed  later,  but 
for  the  present  it  will  be  best  to  consider  para- 
graphs as  performing  some  function  in  longer 
compositions.  We  can  best  try  to  find  out 
what  good  paragraphing  is  by  looking  at  it  as  a 
means  of  aiding  the  movement  essential,  in 
various  ways,  to  all  discourse. 

Lest  any  one  be  too  hopeful  of  determining 
what  a  paragraph  really  is,  we  may  profitably 
bear  in  mind  several  very  obvious  facts.  Of 
the  millions  of  paragraphs,  good  and  bad,  no 
two  are  precisely  alike  in  the  sense  of  meaning 
precisely  the  same  thing;  each  paragraph  is  a 
specific  act.  Paragraphs  are  therefore  good  or 
bad  for  a  variety  of  specific  reasons,  all  of  which, 
however,  have,  in  one  way  or  another,  to  do  with 
communication.  Again,  most  paragraphs  that 
we  actually  read  could  be  written  differently 
without  detriment  to  the  great  end  of  composi- 
tion. This  point  is  important,  since  not  a  few 
writers  and  teachers  of  writing  not  infrequently 
look  for  a  fixed  rather  than  a  flowing  order  of 
discourse,  and  would  thrust  into  a  mold,  or 
treat  a  la  Procrustes,  matter  as  nimble  and 
Protean  as  Loki.  Formal  paragraphs  there  are, 
but  not  all  paragraphs  need  be  formal.  Lastly, 
it  is  evident  that  a  great  many  good  writers  do 
no  more  than  make  indentations  every  few  hun- 
dred words,  on  every  page,  or  half-page,  or  so. 


PARAGRAPHS  123 

Nor  can  we,  by  any  known  method  of  analysis, 
find  among  much  writing  surely  to  be  accounted 
good  any  general  system  of  paragraphing.  All 
that  can  be  done,  therefore,  is  to  indicate  some 
of  the  functions  of  paragraphing  and  some  of 
the  more  conspicuous  ways  in  which  paragraphs 
may  better  do  their  business. 

Paragraphs  are  but  one  of  many  instruments 
of  composition  for  helping  movement.  This  in 
general  they  do  by  enabling  the  eye  and  the 
mind  to  make  frequent  fresh  starts,  a  matter 
of  moment  alike  to  writer  and  reader.  The 
breaks  indicated  by  paragraphs  act,  in  some 
ways,  like  shifts  of  scene  in  theaters,  like  stops 
in  symphonies,  or  like  the  peaks  and  valleys  in 
mountain-chains,  which  are  more  agreeable 
than  uniform  masses  and  straight  lines.  Or, 
to  change  the  figure  and  the  point  of  view, 
paragraphs  are  good  for  much  the  same  reason 
that  a  way  train  is  less  conducive  to  repose  than 
an  express;  the  frequent  stops  make  you  sit  up. 
They  may  tax  your  brain  and,  like  long  "locals," 
may  give  you  a  headache;  but  you  take  in 
more  details  by  the  way  than  when  the  object 
is  to  cover  ground  as  rapidly  as  possible.  In 
like  manner,  spoken  paragraphs,  indicated  by 
pauses  and  changes  of  voice,  often  jostle  listeners 
into  attention.  Abandoning  figures  of  speech, 
which  may  be  misleading,  in  that  the  object  of 
passengers  is  to  "get  there,"  whereas  of  writing 
the  aim  is  also  to  communicate  facts  and  ideas 


124        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

as  they  come  up,  we  may  observe  this  primary 
function  of  paragraphing  in  two  very  simple 
instances  —  business  letters  and  narrative  dia- 
logue. With  the  former,  it  is  convenient  to  put 
each  topic  or  item  into  a  separate  paragraph,  and 
narrative  conversation  is  much  easier  to  read  if 
an  indentation  is  made  whenever  the  speaker 
changes,  even  if  he  merely  says  "Yes"  or  "No." 
Indentations,  like  quotation  marks,  give  us 
notice  that  something  different  is  to  take  place. 
The  usefulness  of  the  conventions  of  paragraphing 
in  narrative  dialogue  may  be  seen  by  comparing 
the  printing  of  dialogue  in,  say,  many  of  the 
eighteenth  century  novels  with  what  we  have 
now,  and  any  one  who  will  be  at  pains  to  do  this 
will  bless  the  compositor  who  first  hit  on  the 
device.  It  might  be  answered  that  we  find  our 
modern  method  easier  because  we  are  more  used 
to  it;  but  the  fact  that  it  has  stuck  as  one  of  the 
fixed  conventions  of  writing  is  probably  due  to 
its  usefulness. 

In  many  other  kinds  of  writing  the  case  is  not 
so  simple.  Breaks  there  are,  but  the  resulting 
paragraphs  follow  no  such  conventions  as  we  see 
in  business  letters  or  dialogue.  They  too,  how- 
ever, must  do  something  to  make  expression 
clearer  and  reading  easier.  Otherwise,  para- 
graphing would  not  be  practised  as  it  is  to-day, 
when,  as  we  all  know,  many  writers,  each  in  a 
way  that  may  be  often  called  his  own,  consciously 
or  informally,  have  introduced  various  refine- 


PARAGRAPHS  125 

merits  in  paragraphing  and  have  trained  it  to  be 
a  very  serviceable  handmaid  of  clarity.  Let  us 
see  if,  in  all  the  variety  of  paragraphs,  there  are 
any  general  functions  and  refinements  of  the 
functions  that  have  been  spoken  of. 

Discourse  moves,  and  the  question  is  of  the 
part  that  paragraphing  may  perform  in  this 
movement,  whether  it  be  narrative,  descriptive, 
expository,  or  argumentative.  Discourse  moves 
by  the  continuation  of  the  same  matter,  either 
from  a  new  point  of  view  or,  on  occasion,  by 
repetition  in  different  terms  —  by  illustration  of 
this  matter,  or  by  exceptions  to  it  and  digres- 
sions from  it;  by  anticipation  of  new  matter, 
and  the  actual  presentation  of  it,  directly,  or 
by  illustration,  or  by  exception,  or  by  amplifi- 
cation, or  by  digression.  The  various  additions 
may  be  simply  clapped  on,  as  in  much  writing, 
or  they  may  be  made  part  and  parcel  of  a  more 
logical  structure.  Evidently  sentences  may,  in 
any  of  the  ways  enumerated,  help  discourse  to 
move,  and  so,  on  the  other  hand,  may  sections, 
chapters  and  books.  That  is  to  say,  any  unit 
of  composition,  large  or  small,  justifies  itself  by 
adding  something  to  what  has  gone  before;  it 
should  be  about  something  and  should  make 
clear  the  place  and  bearing  of  that  something  — 
it  should,  in  short,  have  unity  and  coherence. 
Any  exception,  illustration,  digression,  or  what 
not,  may  possibly  be  put  into  a  single  sentence 
or  even  a  single  phrase,  but  whenever  the  result- 


126        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

ing  sentence  cannot  be  read  as  a  unit,  it  may 
have  to  be  broken  into  several  sentences,  each 
doing  a  different  thing,  and  a  paragraph  or  part 
of  a  paragraph  may  result,  —  of  example,  or 
illustration,  or  exception,  or  continuation.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  matter  may  be  important 
enough  to  require  a  whole  section  or  chapter, 
which  may,  for  reasons  already  given,  be  broken 
into  paragraphs,  of  illustration,  of  digression,  of 
continuation,  of  exception,  of  transition,  and  the 
many  other  things  that  we  recognize  as  the  actual 
performance  of  paragraphs. 

That  is  the  gist  of  the  matter  as  a  general 
theory.  But  the  subject  may  be  profitably  pur- 
sued by  looking  at  paragraphs  as  a  matter  (1) 
of  content  and  place  in  longer  compositions, 

(2)  of  transition  from  paragraph  to  paragraph, 

(3)  of  arrangement  of  sentences  in  a  paragraph, 
and  (4)  of  sentence  connection. 

Of  the  first  of  these  little  need  be  added  to 
what  has  already  been  said:  the  place  of  para- 
graphs in  a  composition  is  determined  by  the 
structure  of  the  composition.  Each  paragraph 
contains  some  one  item  of  the  whole,  or  part  of 
an  item  too  long  for  one  sentence.  The  only 
really  important  consideration  is  that  the  item 
should  be  clear,  whether  it  be  illustration,  or 
digression,  or  a  statement  of  things  to  come, 
or  a  summary.  In  all  well-made  compositions, 
paragraphs  have  unity,  in  the  sense  that  they 
are  evidently  about  something  which  is  part 


PARAGRAPHS 

of  something  larger.  The  items  of  different 
paragraphs  may  evidently  be  of  very  unequal 
importance;  some,  as  of  introduction,  transi- 
tion, etc.,  may  be  subordinate  to  others  of  about 
the  same  length.  Granted  the  general  structure, 
then,  all  that  one  may  ask,  from  this  point  of 
view,  is  that  the  place  and  bearing  of  each  para- 
graph shall  be  clear,  that  it  shall  add  something 
or  promise  to  do  so. 

Paragraph  transitions,  the  second  point  of 
attention  in  the  study  or  the  practice  of  para- 
graphing, appear  as  logical  or  stylistic  guide- 
posts  for  pointing  out  the  direction  that  the 
paragraph  is  to  take.  They  help  the  usual  inden- 
tations of  the  printed  page  in  calling  the  atten- 
tion of  the  reader  to  something  new  or  different. 
They  may  be  single  words  or  phrases:  as  more- 
over and  furthermore,  indicating  the  addition  of 
new  material  of  like  bearing  and  quality  as  the 
old;  meanwhile,  the  sign  of  something  different 
happening  at  the  same  time;  hence,  therefore, 
and  other  words  of  inference,  deduction,  and 
conclusion;  as  we  have  seen,  referring  to  the  past 
and  anticipating  a  restatement  in  different  terms; 
now,  consider  a  moment,  calling  for  new  attention; 
and  the  many  other  transitional  phrases  con- 
stantly in  use.  Transitions  may  also  be  complete 
sentences,  looking  forward  or  backward  or, 
as  in  the  opening  sentence  of  the  present  para- 
graph, both  forward  (in  the  main  clause)  and 
backward  (in  the  appositive  clause).  Sentences 


128       WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

of  this  kind  are  sometimes  called  "topical," 
in  that  they  state  the  subject  or  topic  of  the 
paragraph  or  of  several  paragraphs.  Such  topical 
statements  do  about  the  same  thing,  —  but 
less  mechanically,  —  as  titles,  italics,  and  black 
letter  type  in  the  "display"  of  text-books.  Topi- 
cal statements  are  common  in  argumentative 
and  expository  writing,  but  are  probably  not  so 
common  in  narrative. 

There  are  also  end  transitions,  which  may 
often  take  the  form  of  a  summary,  or  a  conclu- 
sion, or  both.  As  paragraphs  with  topical  state- 
ments are  sometimes  called  "deductive"  in  that 
a  general  statement  is  followed  by  examples  and 
detail,  so  a  paragraph  with  endings  is  sometimes 
called  "inductive"  because  a  series  of  details 
may  be  followed  by  a  general  statement.  These 
terms  are  evidently  used  with  great  looseness; 
for  such  paragraphs  are  rarely  deductive  or 
inductive  in  any  strict  sense  of  the  term.  For 
example,  the  "inductive"  ending  of  the  present 
paragraph  is  to  be  no  more  than  the  general 
remark  (among  many  possible  apposite  remarks) 
that  paragraphs  with  summary  sentences  are 
probably  less  common  than  those  with  topical 
sentences. 

Over  such  matters  a  great  deal  of  unnecessary 
fuss  is  sometimes  made.  A  common  question, 
for  example,  "Shall  I  put  this  sentence  of  tran- 
sition at  the  end  of  one  paragraph  or  at  the 
beginning  of  the  next?"  is  unimportant  or  unan- 


PARAGRAPHS  129 

swerable  in  a  definite  way.  About  the  only 
principle  is  to  do  whatever  will  give  the  reader 
the  best  inkling  of  what  is  to  come,  if  that  is 
N  important,  or  will  give  him  the  best  notion  of 
what  has  been  said,  if  that  is  vital.  The  opening 
sentence  of  the  present  paragraph,  —  if  the  use  of 
another  example  immediately  at  hand  may  be 
permitted,  —  could  have  been  made  the  closing 
sentence  of  the  last  paragraph,  in  which  case 
some  alteration  of  the  preceding  paragraph  would 
be  necessary.  In  its  present  position  it  demands 
more  explanation  than  had  it  been  a  mere  closing 
remark.  Perhaps  it  had  been  better  so;  all 
such  matters  are  ultimately  matters  of  judgment 
of  what  a  writer  deems  it  worth  while  to  empha- 
size. For  the  time  being  the  main  structural 
point  is  that  a  paragraph  ought  to  say  some- 
thing; and  to  this  end  one  uses  all  possible  devices 
that  are  consistent  with  the  facts  to  be  stated. 
The  real  reason,  we  must  always  bear  in  mind, 
for  speaking  of  such  matters  is  to  call  attention 
to  points  where  tinkering  may  be  done  with 
profit. 

Turning  to  the  internal  arrangement  of  sen- 
tences in  a  paragraph  —  and  here  it  will  be 
proper,  though  not  compulsory,  to  indulge 
in  a  somewhat  more  weighty  transition  than  is 
to  be  found  in  the  preceding  group  of  three  para- 
graphs —  we  find  very  little  occasion  for  specific 
rule.  We  may  say  that  there  should  be  order 
in  the  sequence  of  ideas  and  sentences;  that 


130       WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

a  paragraph  may  not  unreasonably  fulfil,  in 
some  way,  the  promise  of  its  topic;  that  it  is 
sometimes  convenient  to  balance  one  part  of  a 
paragraph  against  another  by  a  series  of  anti- 
thetical sentences,  as  frequently  in  Johnson,  or 
by  a  formal  opposition  of  beginning  and  ending, 
as  sometimes  in  Macaulay,  or  by  a  topic  set  in 
opposition  to  the  rest  of  the  paragraph,  as  with 
many  of  our  modern  paradoxical  writers  who  are 
masters  of  the  formula,  "It  is  usually  thought 
—  But  the  truth  is."  Everything  depends  on 
what  one  has  to  say,  but,  under  that  restric- 
tion and  so  long  as  there  is  some  kind  of  order, 
any  one  of  many  arrangements  may  be  about 
as  good  as  another.  The  experiment  of  revision 
may  actually  be  tried.  Here  is  a  passage  from 
Burke,  usually  accounted  a  writer  of  excellent 
paragraphs;  I  take  it  because  it  happens  to  be 
in  a  book  on  Conservatism  that  I  have  just  been 
reading,  but  one  need  not  go  far  afield  for  illus- 
trations of  the  principle: 

" —  (1)  The  robbery  of  your  church  has  proved 
a  security  to  the  possessions  of  ours.  (2)  It  has 
roused  the  people.  (3)  They  see  with  horror  and 
alarm  that  enormous  and  shameless  act  of  pro- 
scription. (4)  It  has  opened,  and  will  more  and 
more  open  their  eyes  upon  the  selfish  enlarge- 
ment of  mind,  and  the  narrow  liberality  of  senti- 
ment of  insidious  men,  which  commencing  in 
close  hypocrisy  and  fraud  have  ended  in  open 
violence  and  rapine.  (5)  At  home  we  behold 


PARAGRAPHS  131 

similar  beginnings.  (6)  We  are  on  our  guard 
against  similar  conclusions. 

"(7)  I  hope  we  shall  never  be  so  totally  lost 
to  all  sense  of  the  duties  imposed  upon  us  by 
the  law  of  social  union,  as,  upon  any  pretext 
of  public  service,  to  confiscate  the  goods  of  a 
single  unoffending  citizen.  (8)  Who  but  a  tyrant 
(a  name  expressive  of  everything  that  can  vitiate 
and  degrade  human  nature)  could  think  of  seizing 
on  the  property  of  men,  unaccused,  unheard, 
untried,  by  whole  descriptions,  by  hundreds  and 
thousands  together?  (9)  Who  that  had  not  lost 
every  trace  of  humanity  could  think  of  casting 
down  men  of  exalted  rank  and  sacred  function, 
some  of  them  of  an  age  to  call  at  once  for  rever- 
ence and  compassion  —  of  casting  them  down 
from  the  highest  situation  in  the  commonwealth, 
wherein  they  were  maintained  by  their  own  landed 
property,  to  a  state  of  indigence,  depression,  and 
contempt?"  —  (Reflections  on  the  Revolution  in 
France.) 

Antecedent  ideas  may  have  called  for  this 
order,  but  these  facts,  on  the  face  of  them,  would 
be  as  clear,  logically  but  perhaps  not  persuasively, 
if  arranged  as  follows,  with  the  alteration  merely 
of  pronouns  (the  sentences  are  numbered  to 
save  space) :  1,  5,  6,  2,  3,  4  (or  4,  3),  9,  8,  (or  8,  9), 
7;  or,  again,  5,  6,  1,  2,  3,  4,  (or  4,  3),  9,  8  (or  8,  9), 
7.  Sentences  5  and  6  are  really  the  only  ones 
in  "inevitable"  sequence,  and,  even  so,  Burke 
could  have  omitted  either  or  both  of  these  had 


132        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

he  not  thought  them  worth  while.  Why  Burke 
adopted  the  actual  order  no  one  can  know  posi- 
tively. He  spent  a  year  in  writing  and  revising 
the  Reflections.  Probably  the  order  "came" 
to  him  and  he  saw  no  reason  for  changing  it. 
Had  he  wished  he  could  obviously  have  used 
more  connective  words. 

What  is  true  of  the  Burke  passage  applies 
more  or  less  to  almost  all  paragraphs  that  one 
actually  reads.  But  sometimes,  especially  in 
expository  and  argumentative  passages,  sentences 
would  seem  to  develop  from  one  another  in  a 
pretty  natural  order  of  sequence  and  logic.  A 
fair  example  is  the  following,  where,  granting 
that  the  writer  knew  what  he  wanted  to  say, 
the  sequence  of  the  sentences  cannot  readily  be 
altered: 

"Like  other  tyrannies,  the  tyranny  of  the  ma- 
jority was  at  first,  and  is  still  vulgarly,  held  in 
dread,  chiefly  as  operating  through  the  acts  of 
the  public  authorities.  But  reflecting  persons 
perceived  that  when  society  is  itself  the  tyrant  — 
society  collectively,  over  the  separate  individuals 
who  compose  it  —  its  means  of  tyrannizing  are 
not  restricted  to  the  acts  which  it  may  do  by  the 
hands  of  its  political  functionaries.  Society  can 
and  does  execute  its  own  mandates:  and  if  it 
issues  wrong  mandates  instead  of  right,  or  any 
mandates  at  all  in  things  with  which  it  ought  not 
to  meddle,  it  practices  a  social  tyranny  more 
formidable  than  many  kinds  of  political  oppres- 


PARAGRAPHS  133 

sion,  since,  though  not  usually  upheld  by  such 
extreme  penalties,  it  leaves  fewer  means  of 
escape,  penetrating  much  more  deeply  into  the 
details  of  life,  and  enslaving  the  soul  itself. 
Protection,  therefore,  against  the  tyranny  of  the 
magistrate  is  not  enough:  there  needs  protection 
also  against  the  tyranny  of  the  prevailing  opin- 
ion and  feeling;  against  the  tendency  of  society 
to  impose,  by  other  means  than  civil  penalties, 
its  own  ideas  and  practices  as  rules  of  conduct 
on  those  who  dissent  from  them;  to  fetter  the 
development,  and,  if  possible,  prevent  the  for- 
mation of  any  individuality  not  in  harmony 
with  its  ways,  and  compel  all  characters  to 
fashion  themselves  upon  the  model  of  its  own. 
There  is  a  limit  to  the  legitimate  interference  of 
collective  opinion  with  individual  independence; 
and  to  find  that  limit,  and  maintain  it  against 
encroachment,  is  as  indispensable  to  a  good 
condition  of  human  affairs,  as  protection  against 
political  despotism."  —  (J.  S.  Mill:  On  Liberty.) 

Again,  an  occasional  narrative  paragraph 
will  be  found  to  develop  in  point  of  time  from 
sentence  to  sentence  so  well  that  the  movement 
could  hardly  be  bettered  with  the  same  material. 
Here  is  an  example: 

"Here  on  shipboard  the  matter  [i.  e.,  that 
people  judge  by  clothes]  was  put  to  a  more  com- 
plete test;  for,  even  with  the  addition  of  speech 
and  manner,  I  passed  among  the  ladies  for  pre- 
cisely the  average  man  of  the  steerage.  It 


134        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

was  one  afternoon  that  I  saw  this  demonstrated. 
A  very  plainly  dressed  woman  was  taken  ill  on 
deck.  I  think  I  had  the  luck  to  be  present  at 
every  sudden  seizure  during  all  the  passage;  and 
on  this  occasion  found  myself  in  the  place  of 
importance,  supporting  the  sufferer.  There  was 
not  only  a  large  crowd  immediately  around  us, 
but  a  considerable  knot  of  saloon  passengers 
leaning  over  our  heads  from  the  hurricane- 
deck.  One  of  these,  an  elderly  managing  woman, 
hailed  me  with  counsels.  Of  course  I  had  to 
reply;  and  as  the  talk  went  on,  I  began  to  dis- 
cover that  the  whole  group  took  me  for  the 
husband.  I  looked  upon  my  new  wife,  poor 
creature,  with  mingled  feelings;  and  I  must  own 
that  she  had  not  even  the  appearance  of  the 
poorest  class  of  city  servant-maids,  but  looked 
more  like  a  country  wench  who  should  have 
been  employed  in  a  roadside  inn.  Now  was 
the  time  for  me  to  go  and  study  the  brass  plate." 
• —  (Stevenson :  The  Amateur  Emigrant.) 

But  the  majority  of  paragraphs  have  no  such 
excellent  sequence.  About  all  that  one  can  de- 
mand of  paragraphs,  from  the  present  point  of 
view,  is  that  they  shall  have  some  intelligible 
order  and  that  they  shall  be  free  from  needless 
repetitions.  To  make  the  case  as  complete  as 
may  be  where  exposition  and  illustration  must 
be  much  curtailed,  let  us  cite  a  bad  paragraph: 

"Our  late  war  with  Spain  has  shown  conclu- 
sively the  temperament  of  the  American  people 


PARAGRAPHS  135 

as  a  whole.  And  it  has  done  it  through  a  great 
medium,  namely,  the  newspapers.  Any  one 
with  a  tolerably  good  knowledge  of  human 
nature  might,  by  observation  on  the  trains, 
which  daily  bring  their  loads  of  passengers  to 
the  city,  or  on  the  ferry-boats,  determine  for 
themselves  with  what  sort  of  man  the  news- 
boy or  train-boy  is  dealing  when  they  see  what 
paper  is  bought."  —  (Student's  theme.) 

Herein  the  last  sentence  evidently  has  nothing 
to  do  with  the  first  two  sentences,  and,  being 
also  jejune,  might  as  well  be  destroyed.  If  the 
first  sentence  were  taken  as  the  text  for  one 
paragraph,  and  the  second  sentence  for  another 
paragraph,  something  passable  might  be  devel- 
oped from  each;  but  evidently  many  other  ways 
of  setting  the  paragraph  in  order  would  be 
equally  good. 

Development  of  some  kind  —  that  is  the  main 
thing;  but  a  paragraph  may  develop  in  many 
different  ways.  Thus  Mill,  from  the  opening  sen- 
tence of  the  foregoing  quotation  could  have 
gone  on  to  predicate  a  number  of  interesting 
things  about  the  fear  that  the  crowd  has  of  the 
police  or  the  military  as  being  in  their  opinion, 
not  the  instruments,  but  the  actual  sources  of 
power.  But  he  chose  to  talk  of  one  of  several 
opposites  to  that  idea.  Thus  Macaulay  could 
have  shown  in  many  other  ways  than  that  actu- 
ally chosen  that  "The  place  was  worthy  of  such 
a  trial,"  and  Shakespeare  doubtless  could  have 


136        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

explained  "To  be  or  not  to  be"  in  quite  different 
terms  from  "fardels"  "oppressor's  wrong," 
"contumely"  "undiscovered  country,"  etc.,  had 
he  happened  to  do  so. 

All  that  the  foregoing  discussion  of  sequence 
amounts  to,  in  general  and  in  the  rough,  is  this: 
that  there  should  be  sequence,  that  one  thing 
should  be  added  to  another,  in  about  any  way 
that  the  writer  may  choose  so  long  as  it  says 
something  that  he  wishes  to  say.  From  this 
point  of  view,  many  paragraphs  that  we  write  or 
read  are  bad  as  to  internal  order;  many  differ- 
ent arrangements  or  developments,  all  of  a 
good  kind,  are  possible  with  most  material  that 
we  use;  only  in  rare  cases  is  structure  of  para- 
mount excellence  achieved.  In  every  event, 
you  have  to  allow  the  writer  his  facts,  but  may 
properly  quarrel  with  him  if  he  is  not  clear,  or 
if  his  sentences  eddy,  or  if  he  wastes  your  time 
with  triviality.  That  is  the  human  and  actual 
state  of  the  case. 

Turning  now  to  the  last  matter,  it  is  evident 
that  in  any  of  the  foregoing  paragraphs  there 
could  have  been  a  more  liberal  use  of  sentence 
connectives.  Had  more  been  used  in  the  Burke 
passage,  the  order  could  less  easily  have  been 
changed,  but  no  connectives  could  have  bolstered 
up  the  newspaper  theme.  What  sentence  con- 
nectives are  may  most  readily  be  seen  by  citing 
a  paragraph  in  which  almost  none  are  to  be  found 
and  a  paragraph  in  which  there  are  several: 


PARAGRAPHS  137 

1.  "The  penetrating  power  of  this  remarkable 
genius  among  all  classes  at  home  is  not  inferior 
to  its  diffusive  energy  abroad.  The  phrase 
*  household  book'  has,  when  applied  to  the  works 
of  Mr.  Dickens,  a  peculiar  propriety.  There 
is  no  contemporary  English  writer  whose  works 
are  read  so  generally  through  the  whole  house, 
who  can  give  pleasure  to  the  servants  as  well  as 
to  the  mistress,  to  the  children  as  well  as  to  the 
master.  Mr.  Thackeray  without  doubt  exer- 
cises a  more  potent  and  plastic  fascination  within 
his  sphere,  but  that  sphere  is  limited.  It  is 
restricted  to  that  part  of  the  middle  class  which 
gazes  inquisitively  at  the  'Vanity  Fair'  world." 
etc.  —  (Walter  Bagehot :  Charles  Dickens.) 

%.  "Meanwhile,  Ethan  Brand  had  resumed 
his  seat  upon  the  log,  and  moved,  it  might  be,  by 
a  perception  of  some  remote  analogy  between 
his  own  case  and  that  of  this  self-pursuing  cur, 
he  broke  into  an  awful  laugh,  which,  more  than 
any  other  token,  expressed  the  condition  of  his 
inward  being.  From  that  moment,  the  merri- 
ment of  the  party  was  at  an  end;  they  stood 
aghast,  dreading  lest  the  inauspicious  sound 
should  be  reverberated  around  the  horizon,  and 
that  mountain  should  thunder  it  to  mountain, 
and  so  the  horror  be  prolonged  upon  their  ears. 
Then,  whispering  to  one  another  that  it  was  late, 
—  that  the  moon  was  almost  down,  —  that  the 
August  night  was  growing  chill,  —  they  hurried 
homewards,  leaving  the  lime-burner  and  little 


138        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

Joe  to  deal  as  they  might  with  their  unwelcome 
guest.  Save  for  these  three  human  beings,  the 
open  space  on  the  hillside  was  a  solitude,  set  in 
a  vast  gloom  of  forest.  Beyond  that  darksome 
verge,  the  firelight  glimmered  on  the  stately 
trunks  and  almost  black  foliage  of  pines,  inter- 
mixed with  the  lighter  verdure  of  sapling  oaks, 
maples,  and  poplars,  while  here  and  there  lay 
the  gigantic  corpses  of  dead  trees,  decaying  on 
the  leaf -strewn  soil,"  etc.  —  (Hawthorne:  Ethan 
Brand.) 

The  first  of  these  depends  for  its  internal 
coherence  almost  entirely  on  the  position  of 
sentences,  which,  as  in  many  paragraphs,  might 
be  changed  somewhat  without  serious  harm.  In 
the  second,  any  logical  order  of  sentences  is 
made  more  evident  by  special  bindings  and 
references.  These  are  in  general  of  two  kinds: 
(1)  special  words  and  phrases,  such  as  meanwhile 
and  then,  and  (2)  departures  from  the  normal 
sentence  order  to  the  end  that  like  notions  may 
be  as  near  together  as  possible:  e.  g.,  From  that 
moment,  Save  for  these  three  human  beings,  beyond 
that  darksome  verge,  etc.  Between  the  very 
moderate  extremes  represented  by  these  two  in- 
stances, all  manner  of  shades  and  varieties  will 
be  found;  and  the  great  number  of  possible  and 
actual  paragraphs  reveals  endless  opportunity  for 
varying  combinations,  depending  on  the  ideas 
to  be  conveyed,  on  judgment,  and  on  personal 
preference  for  style  coupe  or  style  soutenu. 


PARAGRAPHS  139 

Here  we  touch  on  matters  of  style,  and  to  these 
the  remainder  of  this  book  will  be  devoted.  Be- 
fore beginning  a  new  chapter,  however,  it  will 
be  well  to  summarize,  from  a  new  point  of  view, 
what  has  already  been  said.  Applying  our  prin- 
ciples of  unity,  coherence,  and  emphasis,  we  may 
say  that  the  first  has  largely  to  do  with  the  con- 
tent of  the  paragraph.  Herein  the  only  general 
rule  is  that  the  paragraph  should  be  clearly 
about  something  —  something,  on  the  whole,  too 
large  for  one  sentence  and  too  small  to  occupy 
a  section  or  a  chapter;  and  that  it  should  make 
distinct,  if  unimportant,  additions  to  what  has 
gone  before.  Coherence  means  that  the  place  of 
paragraphs  in  a  whole  composition  and  that  the 
relations  of  sentence  to  sentence  within  a  para- 
graph should  be  sound,  that  is  to  say,  intelli- 
gible, even  if  the  idea  be  unsound  and  false,  and 
even  if  some  other  arrangement  might  be  quite 
as  good.  Such  relations  are  made  more  evident, 
not  infrequently  to  monotony,  by  the  use  of 
transitional  phrases,  sentences,  and  words. 
Emphasis  is  the  use  of  any  means  whatsoever,  — 
sharp  transitions,  topic  sentences,  antithesis, 
short  sharp  sentences,  rhetorical  questions  (cf. 
Burke,  ante),  —  whereby  the  meaning  of  the 
paragraph  is  made  more  distinct.  Evidently, 
as  Professor  Wendell  has  pointed  out  (English 
Composition,  Chap.  Ill),  the  beginning  and  the 
end  of  the  paragraph  more  readily  catch  the 
eye,  and  hence  emphasis  may  more  naturally 


140        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

and  economically  be  applied  at  these  points, 
as  in  the  topic  sentence;  but  a  short,  simple 
sentence  in  the  midst  of  longer  sentences  is  also 
emphatic. 

Attempts  have  from  time  to  time  been  made  to 
theorize  on  the  structure  of  the  ideal  paragraph, 
as  that  it  should  contain  (1)  a  statement  in  one 
sentence,  (2)  an  amplification  of  the  statement 
in  one  or  more  following  sentences,  and  (3)  a 
summary  of  the  final  sentence.  Doubtless  some 
writers  have  followed  methods  akin  to  this,  but 
any  such  one-two-three  order  cannot  readily 
be  found  in  the  great  mass  of  good  paragraphing. 
Nor,  if  a  writer  always  followed  such  a  formula, 
would  his  paragraphs  be  wholly  free  from  the 
incubus  of  monotony,  unless  he  exorcised  this 
by  means  of  a  great  variety  of  specific  detail. 
Again,  the  suggestion  that  in  a  well-considered 
paragraph  one  may  conjoin  the  subject  of  the 
first  sentence  with  the  predicate  of  the  last  sen- 
tence to  make  a  summary  of  the  whole,  does 
not  accord  with  the  facts  of  actual  good  para- 
graphing, especially  in  narrative.  About  all  that 
can  be  done  by  way  of  study  is  to  read,  with  some 
attention  to  structure,  some  thousands  of  para- 
graphs from  the  hundred  million  good  paragraphs 
that  we  have,  thereby  to  cultivate  a  sense  for 
paragraphing,  or,  perhaps  more  accurately,  a 
sense  for  some  sort  of  good  paragraphing.  For 
the  only  excuse  for  this  common  unit  of  style 
lies  in  its  being  one  of  many  devices  for  tickling 


PARAGRAPHS  141 

the  movement  of  discourse  and  also  for  enabling 
the  reader  to  masticate,  in  mouthfuls  of  con- 
venient size,  what  might  otherwise  be  trouble- 
some by  reason  of  bulk,  or  vexatious  like  eating 
rice  or  oatmeal  grain  by  grain.  / 


CHAPTER   VI 

SENTENCES  AND  WORDS:  STYLE 

WE  now  come  to  that  aspect  of  writing  which 
may  most  conveniently  be  called  style.  The 
word  is  vague  and  any  vagueness  must  be  cleared 
away  before  the  place  of  style  in  the  study  of 
,  English  composition  will  be  evident.  Style  is, 
r  >on  the  whole,  manner;  and  style  of  writing  is 
manner  of  writing.  Thus  we  speak  of  English 
style,  or  manner  of  writing,  as  of  speech,  or  dress, 
or  behavior;  and  it  may  be  remarked  inci- 
dentally that  through  long  use  and  habit,  rather 
than  for  logical  reasons,  all  of  us  are  likely  to 
presume  a  greater  amount  of  ultimate  perfection 
in  our  own  style  or  manner  than  in  that  of  foreign 
peoples  or  tongues.  Or,  again,  we  speak  of  the 
style  of  the  eighteenth  century,  or  its  manner  of 
expression,  or  the  style  of  De  Quincey,  that  is 
to  say,  of  his  manner  of  expressing  himself. 
Addison  is  sometimes  said  to  have  a  "perfect" 
style,  but  the  praise  merely  means  that  his 
manner  of  writing,  considering  what  he  had  to  say 
and  to  whom  he  had  to  speak,  was  so  good  that 
no  one  could  readily  see  how  to  better  it.  Hence 
also  we  describe  style  much  in  the  same  way  as 
142 


SENTENCES  AND  WORDS         143 

we  should  describe  manner,  calling  it  good,  bad, 
ornate,  simple,  distinguished,  commonplace,  vul- 
gar, precise,  cheap,  flashy,  or  what  not.  And 
we  also  try  both  to  name  its  effects  and  to  analyze 
the  causes  thereof. 

Style,  then,  in  this  sense,  applies  to  any  writing 
whatever,  is  the  manner  of  any  piece  of  writing 
whatever;  it  applies  to  all  writing;  is  something 
possessed  by  all  writing.  But  it  happens  that 
we  do  not  bother  to  use  the  term  in  connection 
with  most  writing;  for  most  writing  is  neither 
sufficiently  bad  nor  sufficiently  good  and  popular 
to  be  worth  describing.  The  description  of  style, 
again,  has  to  do  with  differences  rather  than 
likenesses.  That  is  to  say,  a  thing  —  English 
literature,  eighteenth-century  literature,  De 
Quincey,  Addison,  for  example,  —  does  not  begin 
to  have  style  until  it  begins  to  show  differences 
of  manner  from  other  objects  of  its  class  — • 
French  literature,  Elizabethan  literature,  Arnold, 
Ruskin,  Steele,  Swift,  and  so  forth.  If  these 
differences  did  not  exist,  could  be  neither  felt 
nor  formulated,  such  a  thing  as  style  would  not 
attract  any  attention.  In  such  an  event  the  term 
"  style  of  writing  "  would  equal  writing  rather  than 
manner  of  writing.  It  is,  of  course,  quite  possible 
to  look  upon  the  common  matters  as  the  real 
basis  of  style;  that  is  to  say,  to  regard  the 
fundamental,  common,  everyday  facts  of  the 
English  language  as  the  most  important  affair, 
to  attempt  to  describe  these  phenomena,  and  to 


144        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

stick  as  close  to  them  as  possible.  And  that  is 
evidently  what  the  more  sensible  books  on  style 
actually  do,  either  directly  or  by  assumption. 

Since,  however,  style  is  most  evident  in  differ- 
ences, we  need  not  be  astonished  to  find  that  the 
term  has  taken  on  many  new  and  curious  mean- 
ings. These  more  limited  views  tend  to  dwell 
on  differences,  until  these  differences  may  be- 
come the  result  to  be  aimed  at.  Individual  style 
does  not  exist  without  differences  of  some  kind, 
but  it  is  another  thing  to  erect  these  differences, 
or  any  differences  that  may  be  trumped  up,  into 
the  matter  of  special  importance,  over  and 
above  the  essential  differences  that  must  arise 
in  various  subjects  and  in  diverse  personalities. 
1  Two,  among  several,  of  these  conceptions  of 
style  may  be  mentioned.  Over  and  above 
intelligibility,  which  is  the  natural  aim  of  all 
language,  style,  as  a  special  result,  is  conceived 
to  be  an  expression  of  personality,  of  individu- 
ality, of  "the  writer's  sense  of  fact."  No  original 
writer  can  help  expressing  his  personality;  but 
evil  enters  into  the  literary  world  when  that 
personality  is  made  the  important  thing  to  be 
cultivated  and  expressed.  Again,  style  is  some- 
times imagined  to  be  a  very  rare  and  subtle 
essence,  possessed  only  of  the  literary  elect,  as 
when  we  say,  "He  has  style."  Style  in  this  sense 
we  pride  ourselves  on  being  able  to  detect,  as 
if  we  were  literary  tea-tasters;  but  we  cannot  tell 
what  we  mean  by  the  term,  and  the  presence  of 


SENTENCES  AND  WORDS         145 

the  volatile  fragrance  would  probably  not  be 
detected  in  equal  amounts  in  any  literary  pro- 
duction by  different  literary  analysts. 

The  reason  for  speaking  of  these  two  aspects 
of  style  is  really  to  drop  them,  to  get  them  out 
of  our  system,  —  not  that  they  may  not  exist, 
but  that  they  are  in  the  way  of  the  present  dis- 
cussion, which  attempts  to  explain  style  on  a 
more  democratic  principle.  Practical  teachers 
of  composition  all  know  how  such  conceptions 
as  have  been  named  get  in  the  way  of  the  young 
writer,  and  Mr.  Harrison,  in  an  interesting 
address  entitled  On  English  Prose  tells  us  that 
"style  cannot  be  taught."  Nobody  in  his  senses 
wishes  to  do  so,  knowing  that  it  is  as  idle  to  give 
instruction  in  the  art  of  expressing  individuality, 
of  being  oneself,  of  joining  the  chosen  band  of  the 
naturally  gifted,  as  it  would  be  to  attempt  to 
teach  youth  how  to  become  self-made  men.  The 
real  question  is  not  that  you  should  try  to  express 
something  over  and  above  your  ideas  and  facts, , 
but  that  whatever  you  have  to  say  should  be^ 
said  well  rather  than  ill,  in  the  broadest  sense.. 
That  is  the  point  in  which  style  is  good  or  bad. 
Far  more  fruitful  it  will  be,  therefore,  to  revert 
to  the  process  of  writing,  to  its  great  aim  of  intel- 
ligibility in  order  to  see  just  what  part  the  study 
of  style  may  play  in  the  process.  This  we 
have  done  in  the  larger  units.  It  remains  to  do 
with  words  and  sentences,  or,  more  properly, 
with  words  combined  into  sentences.  This  is 


146        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

the  point  at  which  style  may  best  be  attacked, 
and  therefore  when  the  term  "  style  "  is  used  in 
the  following  pages  it  will  be  understood  to  deal 
with  combinations  of  words  and  sentences,  rather 
than  with  plan  or  organization  of  ideas. 

As  in  composition,  where  the  study  of  the 
subject  is  really  finding  out  how  a  common  and 
variable  task  may  be  better  done,  and  to  what 
points  heed  may  best  be  given,  so,  of  sentences 
and  words,  the  study  is  one  of  points  to  keep  in 
mind.  Most  of  us  do  more  or  less  writing,  and 
we  are  likely,  after  more  or  less  thinking  over 
what  we  wish  to  say,  to  set  down  our  ideas  ac- 
cording to  some  plan.  In  setting  down  our  ideas 
we  are  obliged  to  use  the  ordinary  medium  of 
words  combined  into  sentences.  Words  un- 
combined  have,  as  we  saw  in  Chapter  I,  no  value 
except  in  exclamations  or  answers  to  specific 
questions  where,  indeed,  the  combination  is 
implied;  the  essential  act  of  writing  is  a  series 
of  predications  about  the  ideas  for  which  cer- 
tain words  stand.  If  these  predications  do  not 
satisfy  us,  we  revise  and  tinker  them  until  they 
better  meet  our  needs.  The  actual  questions 
which  any  one  may  ask  himself  of  expression,  — 
that  is  of  the  phraseology  rather  than  the  ar- 
rangement of  material,  —  are  whether  his  expres- 
sion says  what  he  wishes  it  to  say,  and,  secondly, 
whether  it  may  not  be  made  more  pleasing  and 
agreeable  both  to  himself  and  to  his  reader.  It 
is  perhaps  inconsistent  with  the  facts  of  actual 


SENTENCES  AND  WORDS         147 

practice  of  even  the  highest  order,  as  it  is  surely 
inconsistent  with  what  psychology  teaches  us 
regarding  human  motives,  to  make  the  measure 
of  goodness  simply  "the  economy  of  the  reader's 
attention,"  as  did  Spencer  in  his  altruistic  essay, 
The  Philosophy  of  Style.  For  it  is  evident  that 
the  idea  has  claims  to  be  accurately  represented; 
no  writer  is  probably  quite  free  from  a  desire  or 
an  impulse  to  please  himself  according  to  his 
lights,  however  they  may  have  been  kindled; 
and  the  seductions  of  language  for  one  who 
hath  music  in  his  soul  are  manifest.  Here  formal 
rhetoric  may  come  to  one's  aid,  and,  by  drawing 
suggestions  from  past  experience  and  general 
judgment,  or  by  interposing  such  appropriate 
knowledge  as  we  have  of  vocabularies,  of  gram- 
mar, of  versification,  and  so  forth,  may  indicate 
points  at  which  improvement  may  be  made.  But 
this  application  must  always  be  regarded  as  a 
tinkering  process,  for  the  reason  that  most 
writers  are  in  possession  of  ideas  to  be  expressed 
and  of  enough  words  to  make  some  showing. 
Corrections  in  manuscript,  whether  of  elemen- 
tary matters  of  spelling,  grammar,  and  simple 
usage,  or  in  accordance  with  the  more  advanced 
tricks  of  style,  concern  themselves,  actually 
for  the  most  part,  with  only  a  small  percentage 
of  what  is  written. 

The  tinkering  process  is  very  multifarious,  is 
applied  at  many  different  points,  in  a  great 
number  of  productions  of  all  qualities.  Hence 


148        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

in  a  general  treatise  such  as  the  present,  some 
classification  of  the  possibilities  is  necessary. 
Many  systems  are  possible,  but  for  our  purposes, 
the  most  convenient  may  be  based  on  a  very 
broad  division  of  writing  actually  in  manuscript 
and  print.  Much  of  this  writing  —  not  neces- 
sarily so  much  in  substance  as  in  composition — 
is  so  deficient  or  so  crude  that  it  may  not  pass 
muster  in  a  civilized  community  or  even  in  a 
locality.  Its  disabilities  may  range  from  illit- 
eracy not  offset  by  any  virtue,  to  a  too  great 
amount  of  incorrectness,  vagueness,  inaccuracy, 
or  loquacity.  More  of  the  writing  is  of  a  com- 
petent sort,  is  free  from  the  faults  of  the  former 
class,  but  it  is  also  marked  by  this  outstanding 
fact  —  that  it  could  have  been  done  differently 
in  detail  without  detriment.  To  this  class  be- 
longs the  work  of  most  of  our  men  of  letters,  — 
our  preachers,  our  journalists,  our  novelists,  our 
historians,  etc.,  —  and  there  is  no  name  in  English 
literature  that  is  at  all  points  excluded  from  it. 
There  are,  in  other  words,  a  dozen  good  ways  of 
saying  almost  anything,  and  our  competent 
writers  simply  hit  upon  one  way  rather  than 
another.  Of  only  a  comparatively  small  number 
of  actual  passages  may  it  be  said  that  they  seem 
to  be  as  good  as  possible.  These  constitute  the 
third  class. 

The  relation  of  English  composition  to  these 
groups  allows  us  to  classify  the  various  kinds  of 
tinkering  with  words  and  sentences  which  is  now 


SENTENCES  AND  WORDS         149 

our  business.  Of  the  first  class  one  aims  to  re- 
move stylistic  disabilities,  to  make  any  piece 
of  writing  at  least  negatively  good.  With  regard 
to  the  second,  it  would  be  somewhat  futile  and 
gratuitous  to  instruct  competent  men  in  the  art 
of  turning  good  into  "inevitable"  passages.  The 
legitimate  and  more  modest  aim  is  suggested  by 
the  fact  that  much  correct  writing  is,  as  writing, 
not  particularly  interesting  even  though  by  men 
of  social  and  intellectual  eminence.  Good  prose 
style  comes  down  ultimately  to  clearness  and  to 
movement,  that  is,  to  its  faculty  of  not  only 
making  clear  whatever  is  said,  but  also  of  keep- 
ing alive  whatever  ideas  are  added  to  one  another. 
From  this  point  of  view,  therefore,  the  task  of 
English  composition  is  to  tinker  words  and  sen- 
tences, already  assumed  to  be  correct  enough, 
into  such  increment  of  meaning  and  of  movement 
as  is  worth  the  trouble.  The  third  class,  the 
very  good  writing,  English  composition  lets  alone, 
except  by  way  of  admiration  and  analysis,  where- 
by to  arouse  interest  in  good  writing  and  to  show 
the  outcome  of  successful  tinkering. 

It  will  accordingly  be  convenient,  in  the  fol- 
lowing chapters,  to  attempt  some  explanation  of 
correctness  as  applied  to  combinations  of  words 
into  sentences.  This  part  of  the  matter  must 
necessarily  be  explained  in  a  negative  way;  for, 
in  writing,  as  in  law  and  custom,  correctness  is 
detected  by  offences  against  it.  Incorrectness, 
in  other  words,  is  the  positive  thing;  there  is 


150        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

no  rule  for  correctness  except  to  avoid  specific 
incorrectness;  within  these  limits  correctness 
may  be  a  thousand  things.  Within  these  limits, 
again,  the  positive  question  is  of  the  various  ways 
in  which  style  may  be  improved.  The  better- 
ment of  meaning  and  of  movement  as  they  are 
affected  by  the  number,  place,  and  kind  of  words 
in  sentences  is  therefore  the  next  logical  subject. 
Condensation  and  emphasis,  for  example,  affect 
both  meaning,  that  is,  clearness  of  idea,  and 
movement,  that  is,  the  rate  at  which  ideas  may 
be  developed  or  be  taken  in.  But  there  is  of 
movement  another  aspect  which  is  independent 
of  meaning,  wherein  movement  has  to  do  with 
such  matters  as  tone  and  rhythm.  These  are  the 
lubricants  of  style;  at  their  best  they  are  a  great 
thing,  at  their  worst  they  find  an  analogue  in 
the  suavity  of  the  word-charmer.  In  the  fol- 
lowing chapters,  accordingly,  correctness  of 
style,  the  increment  of  meaning  and  of  move- 
ment, and  what  for  want  of  a  better  term  may 
be  called  "pure  movement,"  will  be  taken  up. 

It  should  be  borne  in  mind  that  there  is  neces- 
sarily a  conflict  between  many  of  the  desiderata 
herein  indicated.  You  may  sacrifice  precision 
to  suggestiveness,  on  the  ground  that  more  work 
will  really  be  done;  or  you  may  use  words  less  for 
carrying  power  than  because  they  fit  well  into  a 
sonorous  unit.  Nor  do  readers  and  critics  place 
anything  like  the  same  value  on  different  ele- 
ments of  style.  The  presence  or  absence  of  the 


SENTENCES  AND  WORDS         151 

clever  line,  the  smart  phrase,  the  new  minted 
word,  the  resounding  cadence,  the  delicate  allit- 
eration, may  make  the  difference,  to  many 
people,  between  good  and  mediocre  work.  Be- 
yond mere  elementary  matters,  there  is  really 
very  little  consensus  of  opinion  as  to  what  are 
the  signs  of  good  combinations  of  words  into 
sentences.  Certainly  there  is  no  one  criterion. 
The  nearest  approach  to  one  covering  phrase  is 
the  common  counsel,  "to  write  English"  or  the 
common  condemnation,  "He  does  not  write 
English."  But  what  is  it  "to  write  English 'tf 
All  that  one  can  do  is  to  expound  some  of  the 
more  important  stylistic  as's,  and  to  make  some 
application  of  them  to  the  various  types  of  com- 
position that  have  been  discussed  in  earlier 
chapters. 


.  CHAPTER  VII 
STYLE:  CORRECTNESS 

CORRECTNESS  of  style  appears  principally  as 
the  avoidance  of  words  not  in  good  use  and, 
conversely,  as  the  attainment  of  as  great  an  ac- 
curacy as  possible;  as  the  correction  of  bad 
constructions  and  poor  unity  in  sentences;  and 
as  the  observance  of  certain  conventions  of  form 
and  tone.  These  may  be  treated  in  order. 

Words  not  in  good  use  are  commonly  divided 
into  two  classes:  barbarisms  and  improprieties. 
Barbarisms,  in  English  discourse,  are  such  words 
as  are  not  English;  in  a  sense  they  may  be 
thought  of  independently  of  the  sentence,  though 
there  is  no  reason  for  considering  them  except 
as  they  may  possibly  figure  in  actual  writing.. 
Improprieties,  on  the  other  hand,  are  entirely 
good  English  words  which  happen,  in  any  given 
passage,  to  be  used  in  an  un-English  sense;  they 
do  not,  therefore,  exist  apart  from  the  context. 
Barbarism  is  but  another  name  for  peculiarity 
of  wording;  impropriety,  for  inaccuracy  of 
wording.  Of  peculiarity  and  of  inaccuracy  there 
are  evidently  many  kinds  and  degrees.  That 
there  are  such  things  as  barbarisms  and  impro- 
152 


STYLE:  CORRECTNESS  153 

prieties  obviously  depends  upon  the  conception 
of  the  English  language  as  a  common  and  current 
medium  for  the  interchange  of  ideas  among  men 
and  women.  No  attempts  to  fix  boundaries  to 
this  constantly  swelling  stream  have  been  suc- 
cessful; a  fact  of  great  importance  is  there,  but 
what  the  fact  is  has  never  been  exactly  defined, 
even  less  than  it  is  possible  completely  to  define 
the  term  Mississippi  River.  Hence  there  is 
much  room  for  dispute  among  the  laymen, 
students,  editors  and  writers  playing  along  the 
banks.  The  only  way  to  approach  a  settlement 
of  such  matters  is  by  way  of  typical  instances, 
and  accordingly  a  few  representative  kinds  of 
both  classes  of  linguistic  sin  may  be  cited. 

Words  as  actually  used  in  discourse  may  be 
peculiar  or  barbarous  for  several  reasons.  They 
may  be  obsolete  or  obsolescent;  they  have 
long  since  sunk  or  are  tending  to  sink  as  sediment 
to  the  bottom  of  the  stream  of  language.  Fore- 
wordy  where  we  should  ordinarily  say  preface, 
mine  host,  where  custom  calls  for  manager,  land- 
lord,  proprietor,  or  bartender,  and  a  good  many 
modern  literary  affectations,  are  examples  of 
archaism;  the  stream  is  muddied  by  the  stirring 
up  of  silt.  Foreign  words  for  which  there  are 
good  English  equivalents,  —  nee,  furore,  and  the 
like,  —  constitute  another  division.  New  words 
and  new  coinages,  where  there  are  now  adequate 
words  for  the  idea,  are  also  regarded  as  barbarisms : 
burglarize  and  burgle,  vacationize,  a  combine  in 


154        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

business  or  in  billiards,  educationalist  for  educator, 
and  many  others  in  all  English  countries  are  of 
this  sort;  the  liveliness  of  the  termination  ize 
allows  them  to  be  coined  almost  at  will.  Local- 
isms, slang  in  which  new  words  are  made,  abbre- 
viations without  the  period  or  the  apostrophe 
(as  photo  or  phone,  prof  or  gov),  common  in  all 
countries,  are  other  classes  which  there  is  not 
space  to  illustrate.  Even  the  technical  terms  of 
science,  art,  sport,  and  politics,  may  be  regarded 
as  barbarisms,  just  as  it  is  possible  to  look  upon 
such  convenient  words  as  gag,  guillotine,  kangaroo, 
etc.,  as  instances  of  localisms  of  the  impropriety 
sort.  Vulgarisms,  as  ain't,  tasty,  pants,  are  prob- 
ably as  objectionable  as  any  peculiar  words. 
There  are  evidently  hundreds  of  barbarisms  of 
various  shades  in  the  corpus  of  English  writing. 
Some  of  them,  especially  the  more  recent,  will 
not  appear  in  any  dictionary;  but  repositories 
like  the  Century  Dictionary  and  The  New  English 
Dictionary  are  surer  than  anything  else  to  ex- 
plain the  respects  in  which  any  given  word  or 
usage  of  a  word  does  not  flow  with  the  stream  of 
current  English.  At  all  events,  such  books  are 
the  best  general  sources  for  getting  at  somewhat 
elusive  facts. 

Theoretically  the  general  objection  to  peculiar 
words  is  that  they  are  likely  to  be  misunder- 
stood or  that  more  usual  words  make  them  need- 
less. In  the  latter  instance,  they  are  assailed  on 
grounds  of  taste,  which  word  suggests  endless 


STYLE:  CORRECTNESS  155 

possibilities  for  strife.  Actually  the  case  is  far 
different.  Burglarize,  photo,  typist,  ain't,  are  clear 
enough  for  ordinary  purposes;  one  may  pooh- 
pooh  at  foreword,  but  not  because  one  doesn't 
understand  it;  we  cannot  get  along  without 
localisms,  as  may  be  illustrated  by  our  saying 
baggage-car  and  ticket-office  in  America  and 
luggage  van  and  booking  office  in  England;  and 
technical  words  have  to  be  employed  in  all 
sciences,  arts,  and  mechanical  occupations.  Nor 
must  it  be  forgotten  that  many  words  now  com- 
monly used  would  surely,  at  some  time  in  their 
history,  have  been  regarded  as  barbarisms  had 
the  modern  type  of  rhetorical  mind  then  existed; 
the  plain  citizen  has  doubtless  at  all  periods  of 
history  been  obliged  to  say,  "What  a  funny  word; 
I  don't  know  what  you  mean  by  it."  As  Mr. 
Pearsall  Smith  points  out  (The  English  Language, 
Chap.  V),  our  standard  writers  were  once  inno- 
vators in  language.  Again,  for  dramatic  purposes, 
colloquialisms  and  slang  have  to  be  employed, 
and  they  are  also  often  useful  in  direct  discourse. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  probably  no  such  thing 
exists  as  a  "well  of  English  undefiled,"  any  more 
than  there  is  a  pure  physical  type;  at  all  events 
no  two  critics  would  agree  in  their  application  of 
the  term  "pure  English"  to  any  given  piece 
of  writing.  For  practical  purposes,  then,  about 
the  only  advice  that  can  be  given  with  regard  to 
barbarisms  is  to  avoid,  so  far  as  seems  wise,  any 
peculiarities  of  language,  whether  reversions  to 


156        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

old  days,  or  new  experiments,  or  foreign  borrow^ 
ings,  or  technicalities,  or  slang,  or  localisms,  or 
vulgarisms.  Yet  even  this  rule  cannot  be  pressed 
very  far;  for  it  is  on  the  whole  contrary  to  what 
is  always  happening  in  language.  One  does  not 
wish  to  offend  the  taste  or  to  shock  the  intelli- 
gence of  his  readers,  but  one  has  often  to  reckon 
with  divided  usage,  and,  in  writing,  as  in  every 
active  concern  in  life,  one  has  to  take  risks.  In 
any  event,  the  risk  is  not  great;  for  barbarisms, 
as  we  have  seen,  eddy  about  the  banks  of  lan- 
guage and  do  not  affect  the  main  stream. 

To  call  a  word  an  impropriety  is  to  say  that  it 
is  inaccurately  used;  but  what  is  it  to  use  a  word 
inaccurately?  The  obvious  answer  is  that  a 
word  is  inaccurately  used  when  it  conveys  an 
idea  different  from  what  you  would  have  it  con- 
vey. The  fault  may  lie  with  the  writer,  but  it 
may  also  be  due  to  the  ignorance  of  the  reader, 
like  ransom,  in  the  instance  in  Huckleberry  Finn. 
Not  being  responsible  for  the  ignorance  of  his 
reader,  the  writer's  first  duty  is  to  use  the  word 
in  the  ordinary  English  sense;  and  that  is  about 
what  is  meant  by  the  rhetorical  definition  of  the 
term,  "An  impropriety  is  a  word  used  in  a 
sense  not  English."  Most  words  of  ordinary 
speech  are  obviously  hard  to  use  in  an  un-English 
sense;  for  they  stand  for  familiar  objects  — 
broom,  water,  clock  —  or  for  familiar  actions  — 
walk,  run,  eat  —  or  for  familiar  characterizations 
—  good,  pretty,  late.  The  human  tendency  is  to 


STYLE:  CORRECTNESS  157 

use  words  that  will  be  understood;  that,  like 
health,  self-preservation,  and  the  like,  is  the 
normal  tendency.  But  if,  as  in  modern  politics, 
such  well-known  objects  as  whip,  steam-roller, 
guillotine,  and  kangaroo  are  used  to  stand  for 
certain  modes  of  alleged  partisan  procedure, 
are  these  words  then  used  inaccurately,  in  a 
sense  that  is  not  English?  There  are  many  such 
words.  To  rail  against  them  is  absurd,  in  that 
to  do  so  is  often  to  draw  up  an  indictment  against 
a  whole  nation;  it  is  far  better  to  use  them  if 
convenient,  rather  than  to  lament  the  decay  of 
the  "dear  mother  tongue."  To  use  rather  than 
lament  is  what  people  commonly  do. 

Evidently  the  question  of  accuracy  is  a  very 
varied  one.  Words  are  inaccurate  only  in  their 
context,  but  this  fact  causes  improprieties  to  be, 
in  actual  practice,  much  more  common  than 
barbarisms.  That  is  to  say,  where  one  word  in 
actual  writing  is  peculiar,  ten  are  probably  inac- 
curate in  the  sense  that  some  other  word  would 
more  commonly  stand  for  the  thought.  This 
matter  may  be  made  clearer  by  a  few  general 
observations. 

One  of  the  great  discoveries  of  modern  lan- 
guage study  is  the  fact  of  vocabularies,  as  op- 
posed to  a  standard  vocabulary.  Vocabularies 
have  always  existed  in  a  far  greater  variety  and 
with  much  more  shading  of  detail  than  may  be 
possibly  represented  by  scientific  categories. 
Indeed,  the  real  truth  is  that  there  is  no  such 


158        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

thing  as  vocabulary  but  only  some  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  words;  to  this  truth  vocabularies 
gets  considerably  closer  than  vocabulary.  Now 
such  vocabularies,  in  so  far  as  they  are  real  and 
separable  from  one  another,  have  sprung  from 
the  needs  of  different  occasions,  communities, 
ideas,  and  occupations.  It  is  pleasant  to  repre- 
sent them  in  pairs;  for  one  kind  of  vocabulary 
tends  to  suggest  its  opposite.  Types  of  expres- 
sion tend  to  hunt  in  couples.  Thus  we  have 
learned  words  and  popular  words,  poetical  dic- 
tion and  prosaic  diction,  literary  usage  and  col- 
loquial usage,  propriety  and  slang,  dramatic 
and  impersonal  language,  stock  and  individual 
phrasing,  convention  and  originality,  common- 
I  place  and  cleverness,  style  and  commonplace, 
:  class  language  and  the  common  stock,  literal 
and  figurative  words,  charming  diction  and 
cacophony.  One  can  go  on  multiplying  these 
pairs  till  the  cows  come  home  or  the  resources 
of  the  dictionary  are  a- weary.  They  will  have 
a  more  or  Jess  real  value  and  existence,  in  so  far 
as  the  characterization  applies  to  certain  pre- 
valent phenomena  of  wording  in  any  piece  or 
pieces  of  writing  or  to  the  usage  in  any  part  of  a 
country.  About  all  that  can  be  said  of  many 
pieces  of  English  is  that  they  are  to  be  stylis- 
tically characterized  vby  one  of  the  words  in  each 
of  these  and  other  possible  pairs.  The  object 
of  these  pairs  is  to  describe  without  vituperation 
and  also  to  name  occasions  and  conditions. 


STYLE:  CORRECTNESS ,  159 

These  various  kinds  of  words  imply  that  inac- 
curacy is  not  the  same  thing  on  all  occasions. 
A  scientific  or  a  technical  word,  for  example,  has 
to  be  used  with  much  greater  accuracy  and  pre- 
cision than  those  words  that  name  familiar  ob- 
jects and  describe  common  acts;  indeed,  careful 
writers  are  often  at  pains  to  define  certain  words 
when  the  quality  of  the  audience  or  the  nature 
of  the  subject  makes  perfect  understanding 
necessary.  At  the  other  extreme,  poetical  words 
or  slang  words  are  susceptible  of  no  such  defini- 
tion; the  object  is  to  make  them  do  as  much 
work  as  possible  without  telling  how  it  is  to  be 
done.  Slang  is  much  condemned,  and  for  the 
most  part  justly  so;  but  the  objection  comes 
down  to  the  fact  that  a  word  so  used  is  made  a 
jack-of-all  trades.  The  majority  of  words  used 
as  slang  are  quite  "pure"  English, — fierce, 
bunch,  thick,  rotten,  swagger,  and  the  like,  —  but 
in  so  far  as  these  are  slang  it  is  because  they  are 
used  out  of  their  more  general  association  in  the 
interests  of  a  special  class  of  people  —  college 
youth,  "smart  sets"  prize-fighters,  jockeys, 
Congressmen,  M.P.'s,  financiers,  play-actors, 
cow-boys,  fishwives  —  in  varying  degrees  of 
blatancy.  The  dislocation  of  some  of  these 
words  from  common  custom  may  be  slight  and 
wholly  justified  by  the  particular  occasion,  or  it 
may  be  due  to  cheap  convention,  or,  on  the  other 
hand,  to  pure  joy  in  dislocation.  Writing  is,  on 
the  whole,  likely  to  be  more  accurate  and  cor- 


160      ;  WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

rect  if  we  try  to  make  each  word  whatever  do 
its  most  usual  work,  not  urging  it  beyond 
its  custom.  Thus  bunch  is  inaccurate  if  used  to 
stand  for  group,  clique,  body,  party,  assemblage, 
mass,  large  amount,  and  many  other  words  of 
different  shades  for  which  it  is  actually  substi- 
tuted in  modern  slang.  Generally  slang  tends 
to  destroy  synonyms  and  hence  to  impoverish 
language.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  certain  slang 
phrases  are  so  vigorous  that  they  do  their  work 
better  than  previously  used  words  and  conse- 
quently stick  in  the  colloquial  speech.  Slang 
supplies  the  best  example  of  popular  impropriety, 
but  the  other  pairs  that  have  been  named  may 
be  subjected,  with  varying  results,  to  a  similar 
analysis. 

No  standard  of  inaccuracy  or  of  impropriety 
can  accordingly  be  fixed.  The  modern  tendency 
is,  indeed,  all  the  other  way  —  not  to  disdain 
any  word  "not  sanctioned  by  Johnson,"  but  to 
admit  the  existence  of  different  kinds  of  ideas 
calling  for  different  grades  of  exactness,  and  to 
recognize  occasions  calling  for  varying  degrees  of 
formality  or  undress,  vigor  or  precision,  freedom 
or  conformity.  To  be  sure  of  oneself  in  such  a 
matter  one  must  obviously  know  many,  many 
words;  the  greater  his  command  over  words 
and  their  associations  the  better.  So  far  as  the 
matter  is  amenable  to  rule,  the  only  rule  is  this: 
use  that  word  which  most  exactly  conveys  your 
meaning,  is  most  truthful  to  the  facts,  allowing 


STYLE:  CORRECTNESS  161 

for  whatever  change  must  be  made  for  the  satis- 
faction of  the  taste  or  the  intelligence  of  the 
reader.  At  all  events,  improprieties  will  number 
but  a  very  small  part  of  all  the  words  in  any 
article,  but  a  few  of  them  wantonly  introduced 
may  readily  upset  a  whole  discourse.  In  any 
event,  however,  it  will  be  impossible  to  satisfy 
the  taste  and  intelligence  of  all  readers;  from 
which  point  of  view  impeccable  English  does  not 
exist,  and  never  has  existed,  except  in  Cole- 
ridge's conception  of  Shakespeare. 

Solecisms  are  technically  defined  as  construc- 
tions that  are  not  English,  that  is,  as  departures 
from  the  customary  English  syntax.  Popularly, 
however,  solecisms  are  about  any  kind  of  linguis- 
tic error,  and  a  little  reflection  will  make  it  clear 
that  they  cannot  at  all  points  be  distinguished 
from  improprieties.  Often  they  are  syntactic 
aberrations,  of  which  the  failure  of  a  verb  to  agree 
with  its  subject,  the  use  of  an  adjective  for  an 
adverb,  the  double  negative,  such  improper 
contractions  as  ain't,  and  don't  (for  does  not)  and 
other  grammatical  slips  are  the  most  illiterate 
manifestations.  Less  flagrant,  though  even  more 
common,  are  those  errors  arising  from  false  posi- 
tion of  words,  particularly  in  the  correlatives 
either  —  or,  neither  —  nor,  not  only  —  but  also, 
such  —  as,  so  —  that,  etc.,  and  such  also  as  arise 
from  the  loose  placing  of  modifiers,  of  which 
only  (e.g.,  "He  only  made  one  run,"  and  "He 
made  only  one  run")  and  like  (e.  g.,  "I  want 


162       WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

to  go  like  the  deuce,"  and  "I  want  like  the  deuce 
to  go")  are  special  sinners.  Here  the  construc- 
tion is  objectionable  chiefly  because  it  may  not 
say  what  is  wished.  Another  kind  of  solecism 
is  found  in  the  confusion  of  different  verbs,  as 
lie  for  lay,  sit  for  set,  and  parts  of  those  brethren 
shall  and  will  and  should  and  would,  whereof  the 
distinctions,  in  the  last  two  instances,  are  diffi- 
cult to  master  and  are  tending  to  become  lost. 
Failure  to  use  prepositions  and  conjunctions  as 
exactly  as  possible  is  an  especially  fertile  field  for 
the  growth  of  solecisms.  We  laugh  at  the  antics 
of  foreigners  in  using  them,  but,  in  doing  so,  we 
forget  that  pages  are  exceptional  in  which  and, 
but,  for,  because,  or,  in,  into,  by,  between,  among, 
with,  at,  to,  when,  where,  while,  whereas,  since,  as, 
though,  or  any  one  of  several  others,  is  not  mis- 
used. With  some  of  these  words  usage  varies: 
thus  an  Englishman  would  say  different  to, 
directly  he  had  gone,  whereas  an  American,  quite 
as  correctly,  would  say  different  from,  directly 
after,  or  as  soon  as,  he  had  gone.  There  are  more 
kinds  and  degrees  of  solecisms  than  can  be  enu- 
merated here;  they  bulk  large  in  such  books  as 
Lists  of  Improper  Expressions,  Blank  Thousand 
Words  Commonly  Misused,  and  the  like. 

The  mere  avoidance  of  barbarisms,  impro- 
prieties, and  solecisms,  however,  will  not  result 
in  correct  writing.  One  might  escape  illiteracy 
but  not  necessarily  confusion,  though  the  mere 
act  of  revision  of  style  from  any  point  of  view 


STYLE:  CORRECTNESS  163 

probably  tends  to  induce  clarity.  Of  much  more 
moment  are  those  matters  which  relate  to  the 
substance  of  the  sentence  and  to  its  internal 
construction.  To  know  what  a  sentence  is  saying 
is  important,  more  important  than  anything 
else  about  it.  That  is  rarely  interfered  with, 
directly,  by  the  presence  of  barbarisms  and  not 
grievously,  for  the  most  part,  by  improprieties 
and  solecisms,  as  they  actually  occur  in  writing; 
these  things  cause  sorrow  chiefly  to  the  erudite 
or  to  the  parvenu  of  style,  whom  they  offend 
rather  than  confuse;  the  populace  cares  very 
little  about  them.  Improprieties  may  evidently 
result  in  looseness  and  ambiguity,  and  you  may 
occasionally  have  to  guess  through  the  meaning 
of  a  solecism.  But  there  is  a  worse  matter. 
Here  is  a  sentence  containing,  so  far  as  we  may 
be  sure,  no  example  of  the  three  sins  that  have 
been  specified;  but  is  none  the  less  an  obscure 
affair: 

"The  vague  and  unsettled  suspicions  which 
uncertainty  had  produced  of  what  Mr.  Darcy 
might  have  been  doing  to  forward  her  sister's 
match  which  she  had  feared  to  encourage,  as  an 
exertion  of  goodness  too  great  to  be  probable,  and 
at  the  same  time  dreaded  to  be  just,  from  the 
pain  of  obligation,  were  proved  beyond  their 
greatest  extent  to  be  true."  (Quoted  from 
Jane  Austen's  Pride  and  Prejudice  by  Professor 
A.  S.  Hill  —  The  Principles  of  Rhetoric,  p.  182.) 

This  may  mean:    "The  vague  and  unsettled 


164        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

suspicions  which  uncertainty  had  produced  of 
what  Mr.  Darcy  might  have  been  doing  to  for- 
ward her  sister's  match  were  proved  beyond 
their  greatest  extent  to  be  true.  These  suspi- 
cions she  had  feared  to  encourage,  as  an  exertion 
of  goodness  too  great  to  be  probable.  At  the 
same  time  she  dreaded  them  to  be  just,  and  her 
dread  arose  from  the  pain  of  being  under  any 
obligation  to  Mr.  Darcy." 

Or  it  may  mean:  "She  had  herself  feared  to 
encourage  her  sister's  match,  and  she  had  only 
vague  and  unsettled  suspicions  as  to  what  Mr. 
Darcy  might  be  doing  to  forward  it.  For  him 
to  have  helped  it  along  would  have  been  an  exer- 
tion of  goodness  too  great  to  be  probable.  At 
the  same  time  the  idea  that  her  suspicions  might 
be  just  filled  her  with  dread  of  the  pain  of  being 
under  obligation  to  him.  Yet  these  suspicions 
were  proved  beyond  their  greatest  extent  to  be 
true." 

Probably  the  following  is  better,  but  one  may 
not  be  sure:  "Uncertainty  as  to  what  Mr. 
Darcy  was  doing  to  forward  her  sister's  match 
filled  her  with  vague  and  unsettled  suspicions. 
These  she  had  feared  to  encourage,  since  any  act 
of  his  would  have  been  an  exercise  of  goodness 
too  great  to  be  probable.  Yet,  on  the  other  hand, 
she  dreaded  that  these  suspicions  might  be  just, 
for  she  did  not  wish  to  be  under  obligation  to 
him.  But  the  event  showed  that  he  had  done  as 
much  as  she  had  ever  imagined  him  to  be  doing." 


STYLE:  CORRECTNESS  165 

Obviously  it  is  the  duty  of  the  writer  in  any 
case  to  tell  us  what  he  does  mean  by  his  collec- 
tion of  words  in  a  sentence.  That  can  be  done 
only  by  his  knowing  what  he  wishes  to  say  and  by 
recasting  the  sentence  to  accord  with  the  thought. 

Here  are  some  sentences  by  a  writer  of  consid- 
erable name  as  a  stylist.  You  can  see  what  they 
mean,  but  not  at  once: 

"As  soon  as  she  [the  Princess]  had  gone,  Lady 
Windermere  returned  to  the  picture-gallery, 
where  a  celebrated  political  economist  was  solemn- 
ly explaining  the  scientific  theory  of  music  to  an 
indignant  virtuoso  from  Hungary,  and  began  to 
talk  to  the  Duchess  of  Paisley.  She  looked  won- 
derfully beautiful  with  her  grand  ivory  throat, 
her  large  blue  forget-me-not  eyes,  and  her  heavy 
coils  of  golden  hair." — (O.  Wilde:  Lord  Arthur 
Savile's  Crime.) 

Note  how  the  interpolation  of  the  extraneous 
details  and  the  loose  introduction  of  she  in  the 
second  sentence  pull  you  up  roundly.  The  main 
trouble  is  that  Wilde  wished,  for  satirical  purposes, 
to  make  the  parenthetical  remarks,  but,  as  com- 
plete sentences,  these  clauses  would  have  dis- 
torted the  paragraph.  What  was  he  to  do,  poor 
chap,  except  to  forego  the  doubtful  humor  alto- 
gether or  crowd  it  in?  So  also  from  the  same 
hand: 

"They  were  both  so  charming,  and  they  loved 
each  other  so  much,  that  every  one  was  delighted 
at  the  match,  except  the  old  Marchioness  of 


166        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

Dumbleton,  who  had  tried  to  catch  the  Duke 
for  one  of  her  seven  unmarried  daughters,  and 
had  given  no  less  than  three  expensive  dinner- 
parties for  that  purpose,  and,  strange  to  say, 
Mr.  Otis  himself."—  (The  Canterville  Ghost.) 

Here  is  a  sentence  from  an  essay  on  style  by 
one  of  the  alleged  masters  thereof: 

"Dismissing  then,  under  sanction  of  Words- 
worth, that  harsher  opposition  of  poetry  to  prose, 
as  savoring  in  fact  of  the  arbitrary  psychology 
of  the  last  century,  and  with  it  the  prejudice 
that  there  can  be  but  one  only  beauty  of  prose 
style,  I  propose  here  to  point  out  certain  qualities 
of  all  literature  as  a  fine  art,  which,  if  they  apply 
to  the  literature  of  fact,  apply  still  more  to  the 
literature  of  the  imaginative  sense  of  fact,  while 
they  apply  indifferently  to  verse  and  prose,  so  far 
as  either  is  really  imaginative  —  certain  conditions 
of  true  art  in  both  alike,  which  conditions  may 
also  contain  in  them  the  secret  of  the  proper 
discrimination  and  guardianship  of  the  peculiar 
excellences  of  either."  —  (Walter  Pater:  Style.) 

This  again  can  be  disentangled,  but  one  who 
runs  may  not  read  it.  It  approaches  the  danger 
point  of  getting  too  much  into  one  sentence. 
Unlike  Jane  Austen,  who  for  once  at  least  prob- 
ably did  not  know  quite  what  she  wanted  to  say, 
or  Wilde,  who  went  out  of  his  way  to  be  funny, 
Pater  probably  felt  compelled  to  assemble  all 
that  could  possibly  go  together,  but  his  re- 
sources in  style  were  not  up  to  the  elaboration 


STYLE:  CORRECTNESS  167 

of  his  thought.  Here  then  are  certain  types  of 
lack  of  sentence  unity,  and  their  causes  are 
hinted  at:  ignorance  of  what  you  mean  or  care- 
lessness in  expressing  it;  seductiveness  of  irrel- 
evant detail,  or  the  failure  to  recognize  it  as 
irrelevant;  more  complexity  of  thought  than 
the  normal  English  sentence  will  bear.  There 
are  other  causes  and  expressions  of  lack  of  unity; 
but  in  any  event,  bad  unity,  or  failure  to  state 
clearly  what  a  sentence  is  about,  is  a  great  draw- 
back to  correctness. 

It  may  be  asked,  at  this  point,  whether  there 
is  any  standard  of  length  in  the  English  sentence. 
The  answer  must  be  mainly  in  the  negative.  A 
succession  of  sentences  averaging  less  than 
twenty  words  each  would  impress  the  reader  as 
short;  averaging  more  than  forty  words,  as 
long.  Mr.  Masefield  in  his  volume  on  Shakes- 
peare writes  exceptionally  short  sentences.  Rus- 
kin  furnishes  a  classical  example  of  very  long 
sentences.  Average  length,  however,  counts  for 
nothing;  for  there  are  many  other  considerations 
making  for  the  good  of  sentences;  and,  more- 
over, it  is  by  variation  from  any  fixed  average 
that  sentences  are  likely  to  be  interesting.  Thus, 
to  put  the  matter  very  mechanically,  Macaulay's 
sentences  are  said  to  average  about  twenty-three 
words,  but  probably  not  one  in  a  hundred  is  of 
exactly  that  length.  It  is  probably  safe  to  find 
a  reason  for  any  individual  sentence  below  ten 
words  or  for  an  average  below  fifteen,  and,  on 


168       WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

the  other  hand,  for  an  average  above  forty  and 
an  individual  of  more  than  fifty:  but  such  rea- 
sons need  not  be  pressed  very  far  or  be  very 
subtly  formulated. 

The  foregoing  are  mainly  matters  of  content; 
we  may  now  deal  with  certain  matters  of  context, 
or  structure.  Certain  of  the  solecisms  that  have 
been  instanced,  notably  the  false  position  of 
correlatives  and  modifiers,  may  be  regarded  as 
incoherence,  but  the  term  may  now  be  treated 
in  a  larger  way.  Incoherence  in  sentences  is 
mainly  a  fault  of  agreement  and  position.  Some 
of  the  stock  illustrations  are  also  humorous,  as, 
"This  medicine  is  most  efficacious  when  taken 
fasting  and  mixed  with  an  equal  quantity  of 
hot  water,"  "To  anyone  having  clothes  soiled 
or  stained  I  will  pay  a  forfeit  provided  I  fail  in 
removing  the  same,"  "She  wore  a  diamond  pin 
in  her  hair  which  was  bought  in  Paris,"  "A 
lady  sat  threading  a  needle  with  a  Roman  nose," 
and  the  like,  which  are  subjects  for  jest  in  the 
more  doctrinaire  and  academic  parts  of  Punch 
and  other  comic  papers.  Here  are  some  of  a 
more  solemn  character,  from  more  elevated  litera- 
ture. The  incoherent  clauses  are  italicized: 

"We  have  seen  such  processions;  we  under- 
stand how  many  different  senses,  and  how  lightly, 
various  spectators  may  put  on  them;  how  little 
definite  meaning  they  may  have  even  for  those 
who  officiate  in  them.  Here,  at  least,  there  was 
the  image  itself,  in  that  age,  with  its  close  con- 


STYLE:  CORRECTNESS  169 

nexion  between  religion  and  art,  presumably 
fair"  —  (Pater:  The  Myth  of  Demeter  and  Per- 
sephone. Greek  Studies,  p.  125.) 

"The  temple  itself  was  probably  thrown  down 
by  a  renewal  of  the  volcanic  disturbances;  the 
statues  however  remaining,  and  the  ministers 
and  worshippers  still  continuing  to  make  shift 
for  their  sacred  business  in  the  place,  now  doubly 
venerable,  but  with  its  temple  unrestored,  down 
to  the  second  or  third  century  of  the  Christian  era, 
its  frequenters  being  now  perhaps  mere  chance 
comers,  the  family  of  the  original  donors  having 
become  extinct,  or  having  deserted  it."  —  (Ibid. 
p.  145.) 

"Forty  years  ago,  there  was  assuredly  no  spot 
of  ground,  out  of  Palestine,  in  all  the  round  world, 
on  which,  if  you  knew,  even  but  a  little,  the  true 
course  of  that  world's  history,  you  saw  with  so 
much  joyful  reverence  the  dawn  of  morning,  as 
at  the  foot  of  the  Tower  of  Giotto."  —  (Ruskin: 
Mornings  in  Florence.  Quoted  by  Hill,  Rhetoric, 
p.  180.) 

"Owen,  hovering  betwixt  his  respect  for  his 
patron,  and  his  love  for  the  youth  he  had  dandled 
on  his  knee  in  childhood,  like  the  timorous,  yet 
anxious  ally  of  an  invaded  nation,  endeavoured 
at  every  blunder  I  made  to  explain  my  no- 
meaning." —  (Scott:  Rob  Roy.  Quoted  by  Hill, 
Rhetoric,  p.  182.) 

The  word-shaker  nods;  and  his  readers  have 
to  rub  their  eyes.  He  has  slumbered  many  times 


170       WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

in  the  course  of  English  literature  and  on  many 
humbler  occasions;  wrestling  with  a  tangled 
web  of  thought  or  wishing  to  say  something 
really  nice,  he  has  written  English  as  if  it  were  a 
foreign  language,  instead  of  being  a  simple, 
straightforward  thing,  if  one  would  only  take 
it  so.  Of  course  we  all  understand  the  foregoing 
passages  well  enough  —  until  we  try  to  see  what 
they  mean. 

It  is  impossible,  within  the  limits  of  this 
chapter,  to  give  any  full  description  of  this  sub- 
tle vice  of  incoherence.  The  slips  are  probably 
much  more  frequent  than  those  arising  from 
lack  of  unity.  On  the  other  hand,  incoherence 
results  less  frequently  in  positive  obscurity;  for 
in  the  instances  cited,  and  in  nearly  all  others, 
one  may  usually  see  what  the  writer  is  driving 
at.  But  one  has  always  to  be  on  the  watch 
against  the  fault.  As  a  precautionary  measure, 
the  use  of  the  periodic  sentence  (i.  e.9  the  sentence 
in  which  the  grammatical  structure  is  not  com- 
plete until  the  period,  e.  g.,  the  present  sentence), 
is,  within  certain  limits,  advisable.  In  the  pe- 
riodic sentence,  one  has  to  be  rather  more  obser- 
vant of  the  placing  of  subordinate  clauses  than 
if  he  writes  a  loose  sentence,  stringing  out  clause 
after  clause,  beyond  the  grammatical  limits  of 
the  sentence,  as  is  done  in  this  sentence,  it  being 
an  example  set  by  Pater  in  the  second  of  the 
sentences  quoted  above,  from  him;  for  all  sen- 
tences may  be  regarded  as  loose  when  they  are 


STYLE:  CORRECTNESS  171 

hot  periodic.  Loose  sentences  may,  of  course, 
be  constructed  with  much  skill  if  the  writer  will 
be  at  pains  to  save  the  end  clauses  for  important 
ideas  and  to  make  the  grammatical  connection  as 
firm  as  possible.  The  balanced  sentence,  again, 
that  is,  the  sentence  in  which  ideas  of  equivalent 
value  are  put  into  similar  constructions,  is  a  help 
to  coherence.  Thus  the  following  ragamuffin  of 
a  sentence  can  be  dressed  in  a  variety  of  pre- 
sentable ways  that  will  give  to  the  last  three 
predications  about  the  subject  similar  values: 

"The  Lake  of  Lucerne  is  nearly  cruciform  in 
shape  (query:  in  what  else  than  shape?),  its 
length  is  about  twenty-three  miles,  width  varies 
from  one  half  to  two  miles,  and  its  greatest  depth 
being  seven  hundred  feet." 

These  points  may  not  be  pressed  very  far  or 
in  a  mechanical  way.  No  rule  exists  for  the  com- 
parative prevalence  of  sentences  of  any  one  type, 
but  a  fair  proportion  of  periodic  to  loose  sentences 
is  said  to  be  three  to  one.  The  effect  of  a  suc- 
cession of  loose  sentences  may  vary  from  not 
disagreeable  informality  to  slovenliness.  A 
great  many  periodic  sentences  following  one 
another  without  the  relief  of  looseness  are  likely 
to  be  formal  and  stiff;  they  may  call  to  mind 
Mark  Twain's  description  of  the  German  sentence : 
"Whenever  the  literary  German  dives  into  a 
sentence,  that  is  the  last  you  are  going  to  see 
of  him  till  he  emerges  on  the  other  side  of  the 
Atlantic  with  his  verb  in  his  mouth."  —  (A  Con- 


172        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

necticut  Yankee  in  King  Arthur's  Court,  Chap.  22.) 
Balanced  sentences  pressed  too  far  easily  crowd 
into  antithesis,  and  antithesis  may  in  turn  squeeze 
and  suffocate  even  the  shadow  of  truth. 

The  subject  of  correctness  in  word  and  sen- 
tence combination  may  not  be  dismissed  without 
reference  to  certain  conventions  of  composition. 
Conventions  are  simply  common  practices,  often 
of  a  local  character,  often  widely  accepted,  that 
have  arisen  for  convenience.  Of  any  one  of  them 
about  all  that  we  can  ordinarily  say  is,  "This 
is  the  way  the  thing  is  usually  done."  It  is 
easier  to  conform  than  not.  Some  of  the  more 
important  conventions  may  be  spoken  of.  It  is 
customary,  in  letters,  for  example,  and  in  other 
forms  of  direct  address,  to  treat  with  profound 
respect  judges,  editors  of  newspapers,  and  other 
very  important  people,  and  to  observe  fairly 
rigid  forms  of  varying  degrees  of  stiffness  in  ad- 
dressing all  correspondents.  Here  usage  differs 
somewhat  in  different  localities;  forms  are  not 
infrequently  modified  to  meet  the  needs  of  the 
typist's  manifolding  and  copying  from  dictation; 
there  is  surely  a  tendency  away  from  the  extreme 
formality  of  earlier  days.  Spelling  is  another 
convention  wherein  custom  in  English-speaking 
countries  differs  somewhat;  the  differences,  as 
between  favor  and  favour,  for  example,  program 
and  programme,  jail  and  gaol,  are  of  very  little 
importance.  The  best  practice  is  surely  to  follow 
the  custom  of  the  country,  which  practically 


STYLE:  CORRECTNESS  173 

means  that  a  writer  leaves  spelling  to  the  type- 
setter without  perturbation  or  lamentation  for 
lost  letters.  Bad  spelling,  that  is,  spelling  in 
which  no  system  is  followed,  —  British,  Ameri- 
can, "neo- American,"  "simplified,"  "reformed," 
"phonetic,"  or  what  not,  —  is  of  course  highly 
deplorable.  Of  capitalization  much  the  same 
may  be  said:  usage  differs  slightly  as  regards 
the  classes  of  words  that  we  conventionally 
capitalize;  and,  on  the  whole,  the  tendency  is 
to  decrease  the  classes  of  words  that  must  be 
written  with  large  letters.  As  with  spelling,  the 
reason  for  observing  one  convention  rather  than 
another  is  that,  when  once  it  is  learned,  the  effort 
spent  in  following  it  is  less  than  the  risk  of  hurting 
that  type  of  reader  who  is  more  responsive  to 
correctness  than  to  ideas,  just  as  on  many  oc- 
casions it  is  better  to  wear  evening  dress  than 
not.  No  logical  case  can  be  made  out  for  capitals, 
except  the  capital  at  the  beginning  of  a  sentence, 
which  helps  out  the  preceding  period;  and  that 
at  the  beginning  of  every  line  of  poetry,  to  show 
that  it  is  poetry.  I,  O,  proper  names,  proper 
adjectives,  etc.,  are  capitalized  merely  because 
we  are  used  to  seeing  them  in  capitals;  it  looks 
odd,  for  example,  to  see  William  James  in  one  of 
his  latest  volumes,  writing  french,  baconian, 
english. 

Much  more  important  than  spelling  and  capi- 
talization, so  far  as  composition  and  style  are  con- 
cerned, is  punctuation;  for  punctuation  may  be 


174        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

so  misused  as  to  distort,  or  even  actually  to  re- 
verse, the  meaning  of  a  sentence  —  a  result  nearly 
impossible  with  the  conventions  already  spoken 
of.  Important,  however,  as  is  punctuation, 
misuses  of  the  marks  of  punctuation  probably 
cause  less  actual  distress  than  bad  spelling  or 
inferior  grammar.  At  all  events  spelling  is  much 
more  insisted  on,  and  much  more  time  is  given 
to  the  inculcation  of  it  than  to  punctuation. 
Spelling  is,  of  course,  in  one  sense,  easier  to  teach; 
for  though  there  are  in  English  numerous  diffi- 
cult words  to  spell,  learning  them  rests  largely 
on  pertinacity,  memory,  and  habit;  whereas  the 
conventions  of  punctuation,  though  fairly  exact, 
require  fresh  application  to  new  pieces  of  writing 
and  call  for  constant  exercise  of  both  knowledge 
and  judgment.  The  general  rule  for  punctua- 
tion —  having  mastered  the  significance  of  the 
marks  —  is  to  omit  no  sign  where  ambiguity  or 
obscurity  is  likely  to  arise  from  such  omission. 

Before  leaving  the  subject  of  conventions  one 
other  kind  may  be  spoken  of  —  conventions  of 
tone.  These  are  best  illustrated  by  that  form 
of  discourse  or  language  which  is  called  "parlia- 
mentary." This  is  a  different  thing  from  the 
conventions  of  address  already  spoken  of  and  it 
amounts  to  much  more  than  the  interpolation  of 
a  reasonable  number  of  such  phrases  as  "sir," 
"the  right  hon.  leader  of  the  opposition,"  "my 
esteemed  colleague  from  Montana,"  :<  the  Robin- 
sonian  professor  of  sacred  theology,"  and  all  the 


STYLE:  CORRECTNESS  175 

other  paraphernalia  of  address  and  reference 
common  to  debating  clubs  and  committee  meet- 
ings. It  consists  rather  in  general  correspondence 
of  mind  and  expression  —  the  absence  of  personal- 
ity, bitterness,  rancor,  and  the  presence  of  those 
amenities  that  turn  away  wrath.  Not  that  one 
should  always  desire  to  turn  away  wrath;  but  the 
theory  is,  normally,  that  every  rock  of  offence 
should,  if  possible,  be  removed,  to  the  end  that  rele- 
vant matters  may  have  a  free  field.  The  same 
theory  may  be  applied  to  the  business  world  and 
is,  indeed,  so  applied  by  the  sagest  of  operators, 
resulting  not  infrequently,  in  its  excess  and 
when  unaccompanied  by  moral  qualities,  in  what 
is  called  in  slang  phrase,  a  "  smooth  proposition,'* 
or  a  "slick  citizen."  In  literature,  especially  in 
criticism  —  that  begetter  of  strife  —  we  see 
urbanity  best  exemplified  in  such  writers  as 
Addison  and  Arnold,  and,  to  name  one  of  many 
moderns,  Mr.  A.  J.  Balfour.  More  could  be  said 
about  this  aspect  of  convention;  it  is  indeed  a 
very  interesting  one.  It  is  often  at  odds  with 
the  plain  speaking  of  the  natural  man,  and  is 
perhaps  less  a  mark  of  individual  vigor  than  of  a 
certain  stage  of  civilization.  It  may  tend  to  fall 
into  indifference  or  complacency,  but  at  its  best, 
when  it  is  more  than  a  mere  form,  it  originates 
in  that  charity  which  thinketh  no  evil. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

STYLE:  ECONOMY  AND  INCREMENT 

THE  avoidance  of  barbarisms,  improprieties, 
and  solecisms,  of  bad  unity  and  of  incoherence, 
and  the  observance  of  certain  conventions  of 
form  and  tone,  will  probably  result  in  "correct" 
writing.  J  But  such  correct  writing  will  not 
necessarily  be  interesting  or  forcible  or  valuable. 
Qualities  of  more  positive  kind  are  desirable. 
These  may  be  personal,  or  intellectual,  or  imagi- 
native; may  depend,  in  other  words,  on  the  "vir- 
tue" of  the  writer  or  the  importance  and  interest 
of  his  subject  and  its  accord  with  current  notions 
of  value;  or  they  may  be  stylistic.  All  but  the 
last  are  outside  the  scope  of  the  present  discus- 
sion. With  regard  to  the  stylistic  aspect  of  the 
matter,  the  positive  aim  is  to  coax  all  expression 
to  approach  the  maximum  of  meaning  and  of 
movement.  From  this  point  of  view,  words 
combined  into  sentences  may  most  conveniently 
be  treated  with  regard  to  number,  kind,  and 
place.  When  you  employ  few  words  instead  of 
many,  when  you  choose  words  that  will  do  as 
much  work  as  possible,  when  you  place  them  so 
that  they  will  operate  to  the  best  advantage,  you 
176 


STYLE:  ECONOMY  177 

naturally  tend  to  get  more  out  of  the  combina- 
tion; it  takes  fewer  words  to  mean  the  same 
thing,  and  the  result  is  a  simpler  and  swifter 
movement. 

Number  of  words  may  first  be  treated  in  a 
negative  way  by  cutting  out  superfluous  words. 
The  following  sentences  are  correct  enough : 

1.  "Cricket  is  one  of  the  most  enjoyable  of 
games  and  it  is  a  great  pleasure  to  play  it." 

2.  "It   is  also    told  of    Strafford  that  before 
reading  any  book  for  the  first  time,  he  would 
call  for  a  sheet  of  paper,  and  then  proceed  to 
write  down  upon  it  some  sketch  of  the  ideas 
that  he  already  had  upon  the  subject  of  the 
book,  and  of  the  questions  that  he  expected  to 
find  answered." 

3 .  "  Yesterday  I  spent  an  hour  watching  children 
at  play  on  125th  Street.    They  were  poor,  ragged, 
and  dirty,  but  nevertheless  were  enjoying  them- 
selves.     One    particular    group    of    three    little 
boys  were  playing  with  a  little  wagon.    Finally 
they  succeeded  in  breaking  it,  and  each  tot  took 
a  portion  of  it.    At  this  point  I  spoke  to  the  chil- 
dren.    The  littlest  one  immediately  began  to 
retreat..    The  oldest  child  offered  me  his  part 
of   the  toy  and  asked   me   to  fix   if   for  him. 
The  third  child  was  instantly  antagonistic,  and 
volunteered  to  throw  a  wheel  at  me.     Then  I 
began    to    wonder    why    these    children    should 
respond  in  such  a  different  way.     Even  before 
they  had  spoken,  I  expected  each  individual  to 


178        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

act  as  he  did,  and  I  concluded  that  the  cause 
was  due  to  the  original  make-up  of  each  one  and 
to  his  own  natural  tendencies.  No  matter  what 
situation  might  arise,  these  children  would 
always  be  shy,  good-natured,  and  antagonistic." 

Though  reasonably  correct,  all  the  foregoing 
are  evidently  redundant  in  various  ways;  they 
use  too  many  words.  They  could  be  said  as 
follows: 

1.  "Cricket  is  very  enjoyable.5* 

Herein  you  cut  out  the  absolute  repetition  of 
the  idea  in  the  last  clause,  a  form  of  redundancy 
known  technically  as  tautology,  and  suppress  the 
tautological  suggestion  in  the  word  game. 

%.  "  Strafford,  before  reading  any  book,  would 
write  some  sketch  of  the  ideas  that  he  had  upon 
the  subject,  and  of  the  questions  that  he  expected 
to  find  answered." 

Herein  you  cut  out  words  and  phrases  which 
add  nothing  to  the  meaning,  —  except  possibly 
by  way  of  picturesqueness  and  the  necessity  of 
going  slowly  enough  to  let  the  reader  take  in  the 
thought.  The  technical  fault  is  called  pleonasm; 
but  it  could  about  as  handily  be  classified  as 
prolixity,  that  is,  the  use  of  unimportant  details. 

3.  "After  watching  some  street  Arabs  at  play 
for  about  an  hour  yesterday,  I  spoke  to  three 
little  boys  who  had  just  broken  a  toy  wagon  and 
were  dividing  its  fragments.  The  effect  was 
interesting.  The  littlest  ran  away;  the  oldest 
asked  me  to  mend  his  toy;  the  third  threatened 


STYLE:  ECONOMY  179 

to  shy  his  at  me.  I  had  watched  them  long 
enough  to  expect  each  to  act  in  the  way  he  did, 
and  I  suppose  that  in  any  situation  the  children 
will  be  shy,  good-natured,  and  antagonistic." 

Herein  is  an  example  of  a  verbose  passage,  that 
has  to  be  pruned  and  recast,  and  generally  re- 
written before  it  is  in  any  form  for  consumption. 

It  is  not  particularly  important  to  bear  in  mind 
such  terms  as  "tautology,"  "pleonasm,"  "ver- 
bosity," "prolixity,"  "circumlocution,"  and  others 
which  stand  for  specific  kinds  of  redundancy  — 
unless  such  terms  help  one  to  keep  his  eye  open 
for  the  faults.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  no  strict 
classification  of  the  forms  of  redundancy  is  at 
all  possible:  wordiness  crops  up  in  all  manner  of 
subtlety  and  rankness,  —  from  long  passages  that 
have,  like  the  third  above,  totally  to  be  re- 
cast, to  little  annoying  redundancies  like  the 
following:  present  writer  for  I,  win  out,  divide 
up,  have  got,  universal  panacea,  somewhat  unique, 
bold  and  audacious,  recalled  back,  funeral  obsequies, 
intolerable  to  be  borne,  play  is  enjoyed  by  all, 
for,  everybody  likes  to  play,  and  other  weak, 
passive  constructions;  and  countless  others  of 
various  kinds.  For  such  faults  the  well-known 
tendency  of  English  style  to  double  words  (p. 
£15)  is  partly  responsible,  founding  such  phrases 
as  prominent  and  leading  on  the  analogy  of  the 
more  idiomatic,  traditional,  and  justifiable 
doublings,  such  as  let  or  hindrance,  kith  and  kin; 
and  it  is  partly  due,  in  all  probability,  to  the  wide 


180        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

employment  of  various  mechanical  appliances 
for  producing  "copy"  and  print  and  the  multi- 
plication of  occasions,  which  have  enabled  words 
to  win  in  the  struggle  with  ideas,  just  as  guns 
are  said  to  have  the  best  of  armor  plate.  But 
in  rhetorical  matters  there  is  small  object  in 
speculating  on  causes;  a  strong  effort  in  writing 
should  be  directed  to  cutting  out  superfluous 
words  and  to  uprooting  unimportant  ideas  and 
the  linguistic  weeds  along  with  them.  De 
Quincey's  advice,  in  his  Style,  is  well  known, 
though  he  himself  did  not  always  follow  it: 

"Simply  to  retrench  one  word  from  each 
sentence,  one  superfluous  epithet,  for  example, 
would  probably  increase  the  disposable  time  of 
the  public  by  one-twelfth  part;  in  other  words, 
would  add  another  month  to  the  year,  or  raise 
the  sum  of  volumes  read  from  eleven  to  twelve 
hundred.  A  mechanic  operation  would  affect 
that  change;  but,  by  cultivating  a  closer  logic 
and  more  severe  habits  of  thinking,  perhaps 
two  sentences  out  of  each  three  might  be  pruned 
away,  and  the  amount  of  possible  publication 
might  be  thus  increased  in  a  threefold  degree." 

Though  the  ideal  is  a  good  one,  it  is  also  obvious 
that  most  of  us  do  not  spend  all  our  time  in 
reading;  that  many  of  us  cannot  take  in  more 
than  a  moderate  quantity  of  ideas  in  any  form 
in  a  given  time;  that  a  large  number  of  readers 
thrive  on  plethora,  —  just  as  a  good  ration  is 
not  too  concentrated  but  gives  a  feeling  of  full- 


STYLE:  ECONOMY  181 

ness;  that  buyers  like  to  get  their  money's 
worth  in  pages;  that,  in  the  words  of  Lord 
Morley,  "no  writer  can  now  expect  to  attain  the 
widest  popularity  as  a  man  of  letters  unless  he 
gives  to  the  world  multa  as  well  as  multum." 
But  it  would  be  nice  if  most  books  —  novels, 
histories,  scientific  books,  sermons,  essays  — 
could  be  a  little  shorter. 

There  is,  however,  the  opposing,  if  less  com- 
mon, sin  of  using  too  few  words.  The  want  is 
more  common  among  untrained  than  among 
practiced  writers.  Aside  from  leaving  out  facts, 
situations,  and  explanations  that  are  necessary 
to  coherence,  there  are  often  little  stylistic 
omissions.  For  example,  the  following  is  not 
obscure,  but  is  somewhat  inexact: 

"Aided  by  the  valuable  commentaries  of  Hux- 
ley, Tyndall,  and  Spencer,  Evolution  gained 
numerous  converts,  until,  at  present,  it  is  accepted 
pretty  generally  as  the  true  descent  of  man  by 
the  learned  men  of  all  countries." 

Here  the  writer  means,  " — the  theory  (or 
doctrine)  of  evolution  gained  numerous  converts, 
until,  at  present,  it  is  accepted  pretty  generally 
by  the  leaned  men  of  all  countries  as  giving  the 
true  account  of  the  descent  of  man." 

The  following  sentence  is  positively  obscure 
through  excessive  shortness: 

"Thinking  the  whole  matter  over  carefully, 
it  seems  to  me  that  the  political  geography  of 
Africa  compares  very  favorably  with  that  of 


182        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

America  in  about  1750."  The  baffling  phrase  is 
"compares  very  favorably."  It  should  be  cleared 
by  substitution  or  by  expansion. 

So  much  for  the  negative  aspects  of  the  matter. 
In  a  more  positive  way  the  aspect  of  style  which 
we  are  now  considering  may  be  regarded  as 
economy  of  predication.  Writing  is  words  in  a 
series  of  predications,  or  things  said  (objects, 
in  grammatical  terms)  about  other  things  (sub- 
jects). The  application  of  this  economy  of  predi- 
cation to  writing  will  be  clearer  by  reference 
to  the  ordinary  grammatical  classifications  of 
sentences.  There  are  (1)  simple  sentences,  or 
sentences  with  one  subject  and  one  predicate 
(e.  g.9  "He  will  arrive  in  due  time"),  with  neces- 
sary modifiers;  (2)  compound  sentences,  that 
is,  sentences  composed  of  at  least  two  simple 
sentences  connected  by  a  coordinate  conjunction, 
as  and  or  but  (e.  g.,  "He  ran  and  I  followed  him"); 
(3)  complex  sentences,  to  wit,  those  which  con- 
tain one  principal  predication  and  one  or  more 
subordinate  or  modifying  predications  (e.  g., 
"Though  he  slay  me,  yet  will  I  trust  in  him"); 
and  (4)  compound-complex  sentences,  in  which 
either  or  both  or  all  of  the  principal  predications 
have  one  or  more  than  one  modifying  predication 
(e.  g.,  the  present  sentence).  Simple  sentences 
or  simple  compound  sentences  are  evidently 
much  used  by  children  and  are  very  valuable  in 
all  matters,  such  as  telegraphic  dispatches, 
where  directness  and  simplicity  are  essential  to 


STYLE:  ECONOMY  183 

clearness.  But  no  style  can  hope  to  be  very 
exact  that  does  not  use  subordinate  clauses  to 
state  relations  that  are  of  a  more  intricate  char- 
acter than  can  be  expressed  invariably  by  and 
or  but.  It  may  be  remarked  incidentally  that 
any  succession  of  similar  kinds  of  sentences  pro- 
duces very  different  effects  of  rhythm  from  suc- 
cessions of  another  sort.  Thus  a  succession  of 
simple  sentences  is  choppy  and  sententious,  as 
with  Macaulay,  Emerson,  and  J.  R.  Green; 
compound  sentences  are  liable  to  drag;  sentences 
with  subordinate  clauses,  unless  used  with  skill, 
tend  to  looseness.  The  ability  to  use  complex 
grammatical  units,  is,  indeed,  one  of  the  great 
tests  of  writing,  and  it  may  be  remarked  that 
the  invention  of  the  complex  sentence  was  a 
great  step  in  the  economy  of  style. 

Thus  one  may  say,  "  I  ran  after  him  and  tried 
to  catch  him  but  I  did  not  succeed;  and  he  ran 
around  the  corner,  and  there  was  a  great  crowd  in 
the  street,  but  I  could  not  find  him  in  it."  Such 
crudity  is  probably  extreme;  even  a  tyro  would 
be  more  likely  to  say,  "Following  him,  I  tried 
to  catch  him,  but  did  not  succeed;  for  he  ran 
round  the  corner  where  there  was  a  large  crowd, 
in  which  I  could  not  find  him."  Still  redundant, 
this  is  much  better  than  the  first  version,  for 
the  reason  that  the  subordinate  clauses  make 
the  relation  of  the  thought  more  exact,  and  the 
suppression  of  "I  followed  him"  into  "following 
him"  is  a  great  gain  in  variety. 


184        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

But  referring  to  the  foregoing  discussion  of 
redundancy,  we  can  evidently  say,  as  one  of 
several  forms,  "Though  I  ran,  I  did  not  catch 
him;  for  he  vanished  around  the  corner  into  a 
large  crowd."  What  happens  is  this :  in  a  wholly 
right  way,  you  make  the  phrase  "did  not  catch" 
stand  for  the  original  "tried  to  catch"  and 
"did  not  succeed  in  this"  —  one  particular  for 
two;  and  you  also  make  the  one  particular  after 
"for"  in  the  last  version  stand  for  three  original 
particulars;  one  does  not  need  to  predicate  the 
existence  of  a  large  crowd,  it  being  assumed  in 
the  phrase  "a  large  crowd." 

The  instance  is  extremely  simple,  but  the 
principle  underlying  it  is  of  the  greatest  impor- 
tance in  the  economy  of  writing.  To  put  the 
matter  on  a  more  actual  footing  let  us  take  a 
good  sound  passage,  noting  how  the  italicized 
words  and  phrases  take  the  place  of  whole  predi- 
cations, of  subordinate  clauses,  and  of  phrases: 
i  "Experience  is  a  process  that  continually 
gives  us  new  material  to  digest.  We  handle  this 
intellectually  by  the  mass  of  beliefs  of  which  we 
find  ourselves  already  possessed,  assimilating, 
rejecting,  or  rearranging  in  different  degrees. 
Some  of  the  apperceiving  ideas  are  recent  acqui- 
sitions of  our  own,  but  most  of  them  are  common- 
sense  traditions  of  the  race.  There  is  probably 
not  a  common-sense  tradition,  of  all  those  which 
we  now  live  by,  that  was  not  in  the  first  instance 
a  genuine  discovery,  an  inductive  generalization 


STYLE:  ECONOMY  185 

like  those  more  recent  ones  of  the  atom,  of  inertia, 
of  energy,  of  reflex  action,  or  of  fitness  to  survive. 
The  notions  of  one  Time  and  of  one  Space  as 
single  continuous  receptacles;  the  distinction  be- 
tween thoughts  and  things,  matter  and  mind; 
between  permanent  subjects  and  changing  attri- 
butes; the  conception  of  classes  with  sub-classes 
within  them;  the  separation  of  fortuitous  from 
regularly  caused  connections;  surely  all  these 
were  once  definite  conquests  made  at  historic 
dates  by  our  ancestors  in  their  attempts  to  get 
the  chaos  of  their  crude  individual  experiences 
into  a  more  shareable  and  manageable  shape. 
They  proved  of  such  sovereign  use  as  DENKMITTEL, 
that  they  are  now  a  part  of  the  very  structure 
of  our  mind.  We  cannot  play  fast  and  loose 
with  them.  No  experience  can  upset  them. 
On  the  contrary,  they  apperceive  every  experi- 
ence and  assign  it  to  its  place." —  (William  James: 
The  Meaning  of  Truth,  p.  61.) 

Passages  with  much  greater  repression  of 
predication  may  easily  be  found,  as  in  Gibbon's 
sentence:  "The  winding  channel  through  which 
the  waters  of  the  Euxine  flow  with  a  rapid  and 
incessant  course  towards  the  Mediterranean  re- 
ceived the  appellation  of  Bosphorus,  a  name  not 
less  celebrated  in  history  than  in  the  fables  of 
antiquity."  Provided  you  wish  to  give  the  in- 
formation at  all,  the  words —  for  example,  "wind- 
ing," "with  a  rapid  and  incessant  course," 
"towards  the  Mediterranean,"  and  others  —  tell 


186        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

us  what  a  less  experienced  writer  might  have  ex- 
pended whole  clauses  and  even  sentences  in  stat- 
ing. But  the  James  passage  stands  for  a  more 
average,  varied,  and  hence  "actual"  use  of  the 
stylistic  device.  It  is  part  and  parcel  of  the 
"common-sense  tradition"  of  good  writing. 

Akin  to  economy  of  predication  is  the  kind  of 
word,  the  second  subject  for  discussion.  Some- 
what as  a  word  may  be  made  to  do  the  work  of 
a  clause  or  a  sentence,  so  one  word  may  do  more 
work  and  better  work  than  another.  On  this 
fact  is  based  much  criticism  and  revision  of 
style.  The  principle  may  be  illustrated  by  exam- 
ples of  several  grades. 

In  the  first  place,  short  and  simple  words  may 
be  used  for  long  words  and  phrases.  Thus, 
instead  of  the  foregoing  sentence,  I  may  say, 
without  affectation,  "In  the  first  instance  short 
words  and  simple  language  may  be  substituted 
for  more  elaborate  phraseology."  But  since  the 
simpler  form  is  also  shorter  by  twenty-three 
letters,  it  is  better;  any  difference  in  meaning 
between  the  two  is  not  worth  bothering  about. 
Cases  there  are,  doubtless,  where  words  of  a 
prevailing  quality  have  a  good  deal  of  effect  on 
style,  as  every  one  may  see  by  comparing,  say, 
Swift  with  Johnson;  but  these  are  usually  sig- 
nificant of  nothing  more  than  personal  habit 
and  taste.  Of  two  words  about  equally  good  in 
stating  an  idea,  the  shorter  is  the  more  economical; 
that  is  about  the  only  rule.  Etymology  has 


STYLE:  ECONOMY  187 

little  to  do  with  the  matter,  and  all  attempts  to 
claim  for  a  good  style  a  certain  proportion  of 
words  of  "native"  origin  or  of  Latin  derivation 
may  be  dismissed  as  arbitrary.  The  affected 
and  deliberate  use  of  large,  long,  pompous  words, 
where  simple  words  would  suffice,  the  habit 
known  as  "fine- writing,"  is  to  be  strictly  con- 
demned. 

Gain  is  also  made  in  style  by  the  use  of  specific 
words  for  general  words.  The  specific  word 
tends  to  represent  the  object,  action,  or  quality 
much  more  exactly  than  the  general  word,  which 
stands  for  the  class  or  genus  within  which  the 
object  is  or  the  action  takes  place.  For  example, 
"I  talked  with  the  doctor,"  and  "I  slipped  the 
hound"  are  more  specific  than  "I  met  the  man," 
and  "I  released  the  animal."  The  former  are 
hence  preferable,  that  is,  they  do  the  necessary 
work  better;  they  tell  us  a  good  deal  more: 
the  doctor,  for  example,  is  not  only  a  doctor  but 
also  a  man  (or  a  woman),  and  to  talk  with  a  man 
you  must  also,  barring  telephones,  meet  him. 
If,  however,  the  man  is  not  a  doctor  but  an  under- 
taker, or  the  animal  a  cow,  to  specify  the  fact 
in  such  cases  as  these,  is  of  advantage  both  to  pro- 
fessional and  business  interests.  Since  specific 
words  do  the  work  of  general  words,  and  more 
besides,  the  safe  rule  is  to  use  the  most  specific 
words  that  will  stand  for  your  meaning. 

But  it  is  evident  that  the  general  word  also  is 
often  a  great  saver.  If  we  always  had  to  speak 


188        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

of  particular  objects  and  actions,  we  should 
seldom  get  anywhere.  Thus  a  phrase  like  per- 
sonal effects  may  conveniently  take  the  place  of 
six  pairs  of  trousers,  three  waistcoats,  four  coats, 
eleven  shirts,  and  various  other  "articles  of 
personal  use  and  adornment,"  as  the  customs 
officers  call  them.  General  words  are  also  useful 
in  giving  variety,  after  the  specific  image  is 
well  set  up.  Thus,  "The  hound  had  caught  its 
head  in  the  bars  of  the  wicket.  The  master 
released  the  animal,"  etc.  Clearly  there  is  no 
object  in  specifying  all  the  details  again.  These 
lumping  terms  are  hence  indispensable;  whoever, 
in  remote  ages,  first  hit  upon  them  was  one  of 
the  colossal,  though  nameless,  benefactors  of 
mankind:  without  his  device,  there  could  be  no 
Home  University  Library,  for  example.  But 
general  terms  are,  on  the  whole,  not  so  inter- 
esting as  specific  words;  hence  you  will  note  in 
novels  and  other  books  designed  to  enthrall,  a 
tendency  to  use  specific  words.  "After  many 
vicissitudes  he  married  his  heart's  desire,"  is  the 
sum  and  substance  of  many  stories,  but  this 
general  predication  has  to  be  expanded  into  ten 
thousand  or  eighty  thousand  words  of  pleasing 
particular  detail  to  be  marketable.  It  should, 
however,  be  noted  that  the  tendency  to  be 
excessively  specific  not  infrequently  results  in 
triviality  and  hectoring  phraseology. 

What  is  wanted  is  the  definite  word  as  opposed 
to  the  vague  or  ambiguous  word.    This  is  really 


STYLE:  ECONOMY  189 

a  matter  of  correctness.  A  word  may  be  specific 
or  general  and  still  be  definite,  though  the  chances 
of  definiteness  are  usually  in  favor  of  specific 
words.  A  word  is  likely  to  be  definite  in  pro- 
portion as  the  objects  which  it  names  are  clearly 
apprehended  —  its  denotation,  to  use  a  term  of 
logic,  by  decrease  in  extent  is  likely  to  be  more 
exact  in  content.  It  is  perhaps  simpler  to  say 
that  definite  words  are  words  that  are  under- 
stood, exactly  rather  than  emotionally,  as  the 
writer  intends  them  to  be  understood.  But  it 
is  therefore  evident  that  definiteness  varies  with 
different  classes  of  subjects  and  with  different 
audiences.  For  common,  practical  purposes 
water,  salt  water,  fresh  water,  soft  water,  hard 
water,  etc.,  are  definite  enough,  whereas  they 
may  be  totally  useless  and  vague  in,  say,  chem- 
istry. Hence  arise  technical  words.  Hence 
writers  who  wish  to  be  precise  are  often  at  pains 
to  define  the  denotation  of  a  term  with  such 
exactness  that  vagueness  and  ambiguity  shall 
have  little  chance. 

From  this  point  of  view  another  objection 
besides  that  of  "incorrectness"  is  urged  against 
slang,  exaggerated,  superlative,  and  euphemistic 
or  "fine,"  expression.  Fine  writing  is  not  only 
wordy  but  is  also  vague.  Exaggerated  and  super- 
lative phrases  —  rushed  madly,  perfectly  heavenly, 
a  man  in  a  thousand,  and  the  like  —  leave  nothing 
for  those  occasions  when  the  phrases  might  be 
really  definite.  All  these  expressions,  and  slang 


190        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

in  some  of  its  aspects,  err  in  trying  to  get  more 
out  of  a  word  than  ordinary  usage  ever  tried  to 
put  into  it. 

From  the  foregoing  point  of  view  there  is, 
then,  no  excuse  for  anything  but  accuracy.  But 
there  is  another  class  of  words  where  the  aim  is 
not  precision  but  expressiveness;  the  gain  in 
economy  is  made  in  a  different  way,  —  not  by 
exactness  or  simplicity  or  shortness,  but  by  sug- 
gestion. The  most  familiar  words  of  this  class 
are  called  "figures  of  speech"  or  "tropes,"  because 
they  turn  the  word  from  a  literal  to  a  figurative 
meaning.  Scores  of  tropes  have  been  recognized, 
illustrated,  and  classified,  but  it  is  very  doubtful 
if  so  complete  an  analysis  of  them  as  one  finds 
in,  say,  Bain's  Rhetoric,  is  of  any  practical  value 
in  composition.  Most  tropes  we  use  unconsciously 
and  by  long  force  of  habit:  we  let  a  part  stand 
for  a  whole  (synecdoche)  as  sail  for  ship,  "some 
village  Hampden,"  below  stairs;  or  an  agent  or 
accompaniment  stand  for  the  literal  fact  (met- 
onymy), as  the  bench,  for  the  judges  on  the  bench, 
the  bar,  Wall  Street,  Downing  Street,  Lombard 
Street,  Wilhelmstrasse;  or  we  endow  inanimate 
objects  and  abstract  terms  with  qualities  of  a 
lively  sort  (Personification),  as  "Let  not  Ambi- 
tion mock  their  useful  toil,"  "Every  man  expects 
England  to  do  his  duty,"  etc.;  or  we  state  the 
reverse  of  what  we  mean  (irony),  as  "a  pretty 
kettle  of  fish";  or  we  exaggerate  for  rhetorical 
effect  (hyperbole),  as  commonly;  or  we  do  a 


STYLE:  INCREMENT  191 

great  many  other  things  without  knowing  it, 
or,  in  an  access  of  imitation,  emotion,  or  desire 
"to  write  better  than  we  can."  The  most  im- 
portant and  worthy  figures  are  simile  and  meta- 
phor, the  operation  of  which  is  less  a  matter  of 
shortening  or  emphasis  than  the  suggestion  of 
other  things  than  those  contained  in  the  literal 
meaning  of  the  word  or  phrase.  Simile  states  a 
comparison,  specifying  the  point  to  be  suggested, 
as, "  be  ye  wise  as  serpents  ";  metaphor  implies  the 
point  of  comparison,  as,  "be  ye  serpents,"  which 
instance,  of  course,  is  not  a  successful  metaphor, 
because  it  fails  to  suggest  the  special  serpentine 
quality  that  is  desired.  Hence  metaphor,  though 
more  effective  than  simile,  has  to  be  helped  out 
by  context,  if  it  is  not  to  be  confined  to  that  large 
group  of  ancient  figures  of  speech  represented  by 
social  lions,  clinging  vines,  frail  flowers,  gilded 
youth,  etc.  Metaphors  and  similes  are  about 
the  only  figures  of  speech  to  which  special  heed 
should  be  given;  for  the  others  will  ordinarily 
take  care  of  themselves.  Figures  do  much  to 
liven  discourse,  but  are  likely  to  err,  if  at  all, 
by  reason  of  staleness  and  inconsistency,  or 
through  suggestion  of  the  wrong  thing.  In 
the  last  category  we  find  the  celebrated  "mixed" 
metaphor,  that  source  of  popular  literary  jest  — 
"looking  backward  into  the  mists  of  futurity," 
"he  never  opened  his  mouth  without  putting 
his  foot  in  it,"  and  the  scores  of  others  that  will 
occur  to  any  one.  Vigor  of  style  is,  however, 


192        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

more  nearly  proportioned  to  metaphorical  skill 
than  to  any  other  one  thing;  for  metaphors  are 
the  stock-in-trade,  or  backbone,  or  sine  qua  non, 
or  what  not,  of  clever  and  individual  sayings.  A 
man  may  be  said  to  be  measured  by  his  meta- 
phors. Every  day  new  ones  are  turning  up,  and 
some  of  them  stick,  —  "  the  glass  of  fashion  and 
the  mould  of  form,"  "a  place  in  the  sun,"  "naked 
theft,"  and  many  others. 

So  far  as  the  movement  of  sentences  is  aided 
by  the  placing  of  words,  the  matter  is  largely 
one  of  coherence,  which  has  already  been  spoken 
of  (p.  168).  A  coherent  sentence  usually  offers 
little  resistance  to  free  movement.  There  is, 
however,  a  principle  of  emphasis  which  tends  to 
contravene  coherence.  A  normal  English  sen- 
tence proceeds  from  subject  to  predicate  with 
the  necessary  modifiers  strung  along  in  proper 
places.  This  normal  order  is  not  infrequently 
dislocated  for  the  sake  of  throwing  an  important 
idea  into  prominence;  Carlyle's  works  are  the 
great  storehouse  of  such  emphasis.  Now  as 
Professor  Wendell  has  pointed  out  (English 
Composition,  Chap.  Ill),  the  most  conspicuous 
places  in  any  sentence  are  the  beginning  and  the 
ending,  because  the  eye  more  naturally  lights  on 
these  places;  the  interior  is  less  observable.  The 
matter  may  be  briefly  illustrated:  A  succession 
of  short,  simple  statements,  —  e.g.,  "I  came,  I 
saw,  I  conquered,"  —  however  punctuated,  is 
of  itself  emphatic,  and  no  dislocation  is  possible. 


STYLE:  INCREMENT  193 

With  complex  and  compound-complex  sentences 
the  case  is  different.  Here  is  a  sentence,  unified 
and  coherent  enough,  that  has,  on  the  contrary, 
no  special  emphasis: 

1.  "  A  newspaper  can  do  much  to  influence  a 
person's  taste  for  good  or  bad  literature." 

More  emphasis  may  be  gained  by  the  following 
revision,  of  a  pretty  obvious  kind: 

2.  "A  person's  tastes  for  good  or  bad  literature 
a  newspaper  can  do  much  to  influence." 

Let  us  now  make  the  sentence  dreadfully 
emphatic,  so  emphatic  that  the  figure  of  irony 
is  suggested: 

3.  "  Much  influence  a  newspaper  can  have  on  a 
person's  literary  tastes." 

Three  facts  or  principles  may  be  in  general 
noted  with  regard  to  emphasis:  (1)  It  not  only 
affects  the  salience  of  certain  ideas,  but  it  also 
may  actually  change  the  meaning,  as  in  the  last 
revision  above.  Hence  emphasis  must  be  used 
judiciously.  (2)  When,  especially  in  intricate 
sentences,  you  decrease  predication  (p.  182)  you 
tend  to  increase  emphasis.  (3)  The  periodic 
sentence  is  likely  to  be  more  emphatic  than  the 
loose  sentence;  not  only  is  more  care  likely  to 
be  spent  on  its  construction,  but  the  main  idea 
is  likely  to  be  held  till  the  last.  Thus  the  Spen- 
cer-Whately  classical  example  of  an  extremely 
"indirect"  sentence — "We  came  to  our  journey's 
end,  at  last,  with  no  small  difficulty,  after  much 
fatigue,  through  deep  roads  and  bad  weather" 


194        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

—  is  clearly  much  less  emphatic  than  Spencer's 
final  revision  of  it  (The  Philosophy  of  Style): 
"At  last,  with  no  small  difficulty,  and  after  much 
fatigue,  we  came,  through  deep  roads  and  bad 
weather,  to  our  journey's  end." 

Emphasis,  as  well  as  coherence,  rests  also  on 
what  may  be  called  attraction.  If  you  "bunch" 
phrases,  like  hits  in  baseball,  more  runs  will 
result,  style  will  make  a  better  score.  "Bunch- 
ing" is  a  matter  of  juxtaposition.  In  the  fol- 
lowing passage,  the  simple,  "indirect"  order  is 
somewhat  dislocated,  and  the  words  standing 
for  similar  or  identical  ideas  are  brought  pretty 
well  together,  but  not  so  closely  as  to  twist  the 
style  out  of  shape.  The  words  and  phrases  in 
question  are  in  italics: 

"  —  I  have  before  now  noticed  Mr.  Roebuck's 
stock  argument  for  proving  the  greatness  and 
happiness  of  England  as  she  is,  and  for  quite 
stopping  the  mouths  of  all  gainsay ers.  Mr. 
Roebuck  is  never  weary  of  reiterating  this  argu- 
ment of  his,  so  I  do  not  know  why  I  should  be 
weary  of  noticing  it.  'May  not  every  man  in 
England  say  what  he  likes?' — Mr.  Roebuck 
perpetually  asks;  and  that,  he  thinks,  is  quite 
sufficient,  and  when  every  man  may  say  what  he 
likes,  our  aspirations  ought  to  be  satisfied.  But 
the  aspirations  of  culture,  which  is  the  study  of 
perfection,  are  not  satisfied,  unless  what  men 
say,  when  they  may  say  what  they  like,  is  worth 
saying,  —  has  good  in  it,  and  more  good  than 


STYLE:  INCREMENT  195 

bad.  In  the  same  way  the  *  Times,'  replying  to 
some  foreign  strictures  on  the  dress,  looks,  and 
behaviour  of  the  English  abroad,  urges  that  the 
English  ideal  is  that  every  one  should  be  free  to 
do  and  to  look  just  as  he  likes.  But  culture 
indefatigably  tries,  not  to  make  what  each  raw 
person  may  like  the  rule  by  which  he  fashions 
himself;  but  to  draw  ever  nearer  to  a  sense  of 
what  is  indeed  beautiful,  graceful,  and  becoming, 
and  to  get  the  raw  person  to  like  that." —  (Arnold: 
Culture  and  Anarchy,  Chap.  I.) 

The  foregoing  is  by  no  means  extreme,  though 
skilful;  more  rugged  and  constant  dislocations 
you  will  find  in  Carlyle  and  De  Quincey,  of 
whom  the  latter  was  especially  fond  of  groupings. 
The  matter  is  important  to  movement;  to  make 
it  clearer,  read  the  following  passage,  hit  upon 
at  random  in  opening  a  book  by  one  of  our  best 
moderns — (H.  G.  Wells:  The  New  Machiavelli, 
p.  163.) 

"My  uncle  has  been  the  clue  to  a  great  number 
of  men  for  me.  He  was  an  illuminating  extreme. 
I  have  learnt  what  not  to  expect  from  them 
through  him,  and  to  comprehend  resentments 
and  dangerous  sudden  antagonisms  I  should  have 
found  incomprehensible  in  their  more  complex 
forms,  if  I  had  not  first  seen  them  in  him  in  their 
feral  state." 

Note  how  the  passage  may  be  improved  simply 
by  shifting  a  phrase  or  two  (italicized)  without 
other  alteration: 


196        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

"  My  uncle  has  been  for  me  the  clue  to  a  great 
number  of  men.  He  was  an  illuminating  extreme. 
Through  him  I  have  learnt  what  not  to  expect 
from  them,  and  to  comprehend  resentments  and 
dangerous  sudden  antagonisms  [query:  —  which 
needed  for  ease?]  I  should  have  found  incom- 
prehensible in  their  more  complex  forms,  if  I 
had  not  first  seen  them  in  their  feral  state  in 
him." 

The  last  sentence  is  a  pretty  tough  one  at  best. 
The  addition  of  a  which  before  /  should  would 
evidently  enable  other  clauses  —  "in  their 
more  complex  forms"  and  "if  I  had  not,"  etc.  — 
to  be  shifted  so  as  to  get  a  great  deal  more  work 
out  of  them.  Grouping,  then,  is  a  very  inter- 
esting point  to  which  attention  may  be  directed. 

There  is  of  emphasis,  as  of  coherence  in  a 
lesser  degree,  another  aspect  which  depends  on 
rhythm  and  harmony.  Such  matters  constitute 
the  third  aspect  of  style;  they  regard  what  may 
be  called  pure  movement;  and  to  this  a  separate 
chapter  will  now  be  given. 


CHAPTER  IX 

rSTYLE:   PURE  MOVEMENT 

WRITING  may  be  correct,  vigorous,  and  inter- 
esting without,  however,  being  very  agreeable. 
It  is  likely  to  be  more  agreeable  if  correct  than 
incorrect,  if  vigorous  than  dead.  But  other 
matters  of  style  remain  to  be  treated,  matters, 
so  to  speak,  of  pure  movement,  —  variety,  tone, 
harmony,  and  the  like.  These  may  be  regarded  as 
polish,  gloss,  lubrication,  mechanical  efficiency, 
diffused  beauty,  or  what  not.  Over  and  above 
the  maximum  of  meaning,  these  matters  stand 
for  a  superimposed  and  technical  virtue. 

The  first  two,  variety  and  tone,  are  simple 
enough  in  principle.  Precepts  regarding  them  are 
pretty  well  conventionalized.  We  are  constantly 
told  to  avoid  monotony  in  wording  and  in  sen- 
tence form;  "the  one  rule,"  says  Stevenson, 
"is  to  be  infinitely  various."  Thus  a  long  suc- 
cession of  periodic  sentences  (see  page  170)  is 
likely  to  become  monotonous  through  constant 
formality;  an  array  of  successive  loose  sentences 
suggests  slovenliness;  long  sentences  are  likely 
to  drag;  short,  declarative  sentences,  to  vex 
197 


198        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

one  by  too  much  choppiness;  many  questions,  to 
create  wonder  as  to  how  the  writer  will  answer 
them  all.  Even  at  some  risk  of  obscurity,  writers 
often  try  to  vary  their  wording  by  the  use  of 
synonyms,  circumlocutions,  and  the  like,  to  avoid 
a  repetition  of  the  same  words  and  phrases  or 
the  same  form  and  rhythm  of  sentences.  Lord 
Morley  tells  us  of  Comte,  —  in  a  passage  which 
speaks  of  other  technical  matters  as  well,  — 
that  when  he  "took  pains  to  prevent  any  sen- 
tence from  exceeding  two  lines  of  his  manuscript 
or  five  of  print;  to  restrict  every  paragraph  to 
seven  sentences;  to  exclude  every  hiatus  between 
two  sentences,  or  even  between  two  paragraphs; 
and  never  to  reproduce  any  word,  except  the 
auxiliary  monosyllables,  in  two  consecutive 
sentences;  he  justified  his  literary  solicitude  by 
insisting  on  the  wholesomeness  alike  to  heart 
and  intelligence  of  submission  to  artificial  insti- 
tutions. He  felt,  after  he  had  once  mastered 
the  habit  of  the  new  yoke,  that  it  became  the 
source  of  continual  and  unforeseeable  improve- 
ments even  in  thought,  and  he  perceived  that 
the  reason  why  verse  is  a  higher  kind  of  literary 
perfection  than  prose,  is  that  verse  imposes  a 
greater  number  of  rigorous  forms."  (Macaulay.) 
That  is  to  say,  Comte  agreed  with  himself 
not  to  do  certain  things;  he  arrayed  a  series  of 
dont's,  exclusiones  debitae  gustibus.  The  practice, 
for  the  reasons  given,  and  also  because  it  helps 
to  prevent  monotony,  is  probably  sound. 


STYLE:  PURE  MOVEMENT        199 

On  the  other  hand,  we  find  careful  writers 
engaging  in  deliberate  repetition.  Arnold  sup- 
plies the  best  examples:  having  selected  phrases 
that  pleased  him,  —  "to  make  reason  and  the 
will  of  God  prevail,"  "conduct  is  three-fourths 
of  life,"  "the  qualities  of  regularity,  uniformity, 
precision,  balance,"  "sound  and  unsound  or 
only  half-sound,  true  and  untrue  or  only  half- 
true,"  and  many  such,  —  he  proceeded  to  rub 
them  into  his  reader  or  to  impale  his  discourse 
upon  them,  as  may  be  illustrated  by  the  follow- 
ing passage  from  Culture  and  Anarchy: 

"The  pursuit  of  perfection,  then,  is  the  pursuit 
of  sweetness  and  light.  He  who  works  for  sweet- 
ness and  light,  works  to  make  reason  and  the  will 
of  God  prevail.  He  who  works  for  machinery, 
he  who  works  for  hatred,  works  only  for  con- 
fusion. Culture  looks  beyond  machinery,  cul- 
ture hates  hatred;  culture  has  one  great  passion, 
the  passion  for  sweetness  and  light.  It  has  one 
even  yet  greater !  —  the  passion  for  making  them 
prevail.  It  is  not  satisfied  till  we  all  come  to  a 
perfect  man;  it  knows  that  the  sweetness  and 
light  of  the  few  must  be  imperfect  until  the  raw 
and  unkindled  masses  of  humanity  are  touched 
with  sweetness  and  light.  If  I  have  not  shrunk 
from  saying  that  we  must  work  for  sweetness  and 
light,  so  neither  have  I  shrunk  from  saying  that 
we  must  have  a  broad  basis,  must  have  sweetness 
and  light  for  as  many  as  possible,"  and  so  on; 
seven  "sweetness  and  lights,"  in  fourteen  lines, 


200        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

and  other  repetitions  in  proportion.  Comte, 
for  example,  would  not  have  used  the  second 
shrunk  in  the  last  sentence;  it  would  be  inter- 
esting to  rewrite  the  passage  according  to  Comte's 
rules.  Here  are  extremes  of  deliberate  variety 
and  deliberate  repetition,  both  tending  to  make 
style  easier  to  read. 

Unmitigated  variety  may  possibly  become  a 
nuisance,  and  the  check  upon  it  is  not  merely 
obvious  repetition  of  important  words,  but 
another  kind  of  thing  —  uniformity  of  tone. 
This  is  sufficiently  vague.  But  if  we  revert  to 
our  classes  of  words  (p.  158)  we  shall  see  that 
uniformity  is,  in  one  sense,  keeping  within  the 
limits  of  kind.  Thus  the  preacher  who,  in  an 
otherwise  simple  and  respectful  address  to  the 
Lord,  prayed  Him  to  "bless  those  poor  heathen 
who  walk  in  darkness  with  prognathous  jaws," 
outstepped  his  kind  and  his  construction.  Thus, 
on  the  other  hand,  lawyers,  doctors,  and  other 
professional  men,  often  have  difficulty  in  fore- 
going, even  in  personal  relations,  the  tone  of 
their  calling,  and  the  popular  lecturer,  or  the 
chairman,  or  the  druggist,  may  glimmer  through 
household  talk;  they  would  all  do  well  to  read 
the  essays  of  Montaigne.  Tone,  again,  is  regu- 
lated by  point  of  view,  by  occasion,  by  audience, 
and  we  have  seen  (p.  174)  how  alleged  neces- 
sities of  address,  as  in  debate,  call  for  a  uni- 
formity of  attitude  and  manner.  Tone  is  often 
a  deliberate  assumption  of  attitude,  which,  on 


STYLE:  PURE  MOVEMENT        201 

its  worse  side,  may  degenerate  into  pose.  Hence 
one  may  be  pervasively  friendly,  or  indignant, 
or  bland,  or  may  address  Sunday-schools  with 
becoming  condescension.  Tone  is  also  not 
infrequently  a  matter  of  moral  quality,  and 
here  again  no  rules  can  be  applied.  Practice 
and  observation  are  the  best  schools,  and  with 
that  remark  we  must  be  content. 

The  third  matter,  harmony,  is  largely  tech- 
nical and  may  be  treated  at  some  length.  It  is 
worthy  of  much  attention,  for  it  is  the  most  con- 
spicuous and  important  point  at  which  style  may 
be  regarded  as  something  apart  from  the  instru- 
ment of  sense.  We  have  all  more  positive  ideas 
about  "harmonious  numbers"  in  poetry  than  in 
prose;  and  accordingly  it  will  be  convenient  to 
note  certain  distinctions  between  verse  and 
prose  in  order  to  see  how  nearly  and  with  what 
advantage  the  latter  may  approach  the  dividing 
line,  still  remaining  prose.  Regarding  verse  in  a 
very  general  way,  we  may  note  that  it  is  always 
distinguished  by  the  presence  of  metrical  feet  of 
various  kinds,  such  as  dactyls,  iambs,  etc.  Several 
of  these  feet,  usually  not  less  than  two  or  more 
than  seven,  and  most  commonly  four  or  five, 
constitute  a  line  of  verse.  Two  such  similar 
lines  may  constitute  a  complete  poem,  or,  on 
the  other  hand,  a  poem  may  comprise  hundreds 
and  thousands  of  similar  or  locally  differing  lines. 
The  main  fact  is  the  recurring  of  groups  of  sound 
of  about  the  same  metrical  value.  There  is 


202        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

plenty  of  variation  in  the  accent  and  there  are 
feet  of  exceptional  shortness  or  length;  but  there 
is  also  a  prevailing  regular  beat  which  is  not  at 
variance  with  the  natural  accent  of  words  or  the 
desired  emphasis  of  them. 

Such  lines  may  depend  solely  on  their  meter 
to  distinguish  them  from  prose  —  in  which  case 
we  have  blank  verse,  that  very  difficult  form, 
difficult  chiefly  because  all  its  eggs  are  in  the 
basket  of  rhythm.  Or  they  may  be  bound  to- 
gether by  end-rime  into  couplets  or  stanzas  of 
various  complexity.  The  binding  may  be  aided 
by  alliteration  and  assonance.  The  former  of 
these  is  the  recurrence  of  the  same  consonantal 
sounds,  usually  at  the  beginnings  of  words,  as 
in  Swinburne's 

The  Zisp  of  Zeaves  and  the  ripple  of  rain, 

or  internally  and  medially  and  terminally,  as  in 
Keats's 

Season  of  mists  and  mellow  fnutfulness. 

Assonance  is  the  recurrence  of  the  same  vowel 
sounds  where  the  circumjacent  consonants  are 
of  different  quality:  thus  tame  and  mane,  fit 
and  rill,  are  assonant.  Assonance,  on  rare  oc- 
casions, takes  the  place  of  true  rime,  in  which, 
as  we  have  seen,  at  least  one  vowel  and  one  con- 
sonant are  of  the  same  tone-quality  in  the  riming 
words. 
Among  the  different  vowel  and  consonantal 


STYLE:  PURE  MOVEMENT        203 

sounds  some  are  more  agreeable  than  others.  If 
proof  were  needed  of  this  assertion,  it  may  be 
seen  in  the  fact  that  the  major  concern  in  the 
education  of  certain  people  is  to  say  all  sounds 
without  squack,  twang,  or  nasality,  and  to  open 
and  round  out  vowel  sounds  with  agreeable 
intonation;  singers  notably  prefer  some  vowels 
to  others.  Open  and  broad  vowels  are  usually 
thought  to  be  better  than  close,  flat  ones;  the 
consonants  p,  b,  /,  v,  19  m,  n,  to  be  more  agreeable 
in  sound  than  fc,  s,  g,  t,  and  other  harder  sounds. 
Softness  of  speech  sounds  is  in  a  manner  trans- 
ferred to  reading  prose.  Alliteration  and  asso- 
nance, which  tend  to  use  the  more  agreeable  sounds 
and  to  avoid  the  recurrence  of  harsher  and  flatter 
consonants  and  vowels,  evidently  work  toward 
the  smoothness  of  verse. 

Apply  this  necessarily  brief  account  of  verse 
to  the  matter  under  discussion,  and  it  is  evident 
that  prose  should  avoid  any  recurrence  of  the 
metrical  foot.  If  the  distinction  between  prose 
and  verse  amounts  to  anything,  is  not  merely 
academic,  it  amounts  to  saying  that  the  presence 
of  regular,  recurring  metrical  feet  is  out  of  place 
in  prose;  or,  in  other  words,  that  writing  in 
which  the  trick  appears  is  not  prose  at  all,  how- 
ever it  be  spaced.  The  following  passage,  for 
example,  would  be  abominable  prose,  except 
that  it  is  not  prose  but  lame  verse;  it  is  from  a 
book,  Blackmore's  Lorna  Doone>  full  of  such 
vicious  passages: 


204        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

"  'Nay,  there  is  no  time,'  she  answered,  glanc- 
ing at  a  jewelled  timepiece,  scarcely  larger  than 
an  oyster,  which  she  drew  from  near  her  waist- 
band; and  then  she  pushed  it  away  in  confusion, 
lest  its  wealth  should  startle  me."  (Chap.  LVII.) 
It  may  be  written  as  unrimed  tetrameter,  with  a 
bad  fifth  line,  thus: 

Nay,  there  is  no  time,  she  answered, 
Glancing  at  a  jewelled  timepiece, 
Scarcely  larger  than  an  oyster, 
Which  she  drew  from  near  her  waistband; 
And  then  she  pushed  it  away  in  confusion, 
Lest  its  wealth  should  startle  me. 

Many  readers  doubtless  like  this  sort  of  thing; 
it  has  been  said  of  it  that  the  soul  of  the  poet 
cannot  be  suppressed  but  must  press  upward 
through  the  prose.  Nevertheless  it  is  technically 
bad. 

Prose  naturally  avoids  rime;  there  is  no  such 
temptation  to  use  rimes  as  there  is  to  fall  into 
spurious  meter.  Rime  in  prose  is  likely  to  occur 
in  careless  jingles,  —  "Burke's  Works,"  "one 
wonders,"  "as  the  day  was  terribly  chilly  and 
the  end  of  the  journey  remote  he  put  on  his 
overcoat,"  "fundamental  mental  images,"  "can- 
not be  suppressed  but  must  press,"  and  the  like. 
In  these  instances  prose  drops  for  a  moment  into 
the  suggestion  of  verse,  and  that  to  a  trained  ear 
is  disagreeable,  as  when  a  canoe  strikes  a  snag. 

There  is  no  reason,  however,  why  prose  should 
not  employ  alliteration  and  assonance  when  the 


STYLE:  PURE  MOVEMENT        205 

movement  will  thereby  be  made  smoother,  and 
this,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  is  what  often  happens. 
Anything  that  suggests  a  jingle  or  supererogatory 
pun  —  one  wonders,  for  example  —  is  usually 
unpleasing;  but  this  is  not  the  case  with  allitera- 
tion and  assonance  skilfully  used.  A  succes- 
sion of  syllables,  beginning,  say,  with  s  or  similar 
sibilant  sounds,  or  k  and  kindred  cacophonous 
combinations,  is  not  usually  in  the  highest  degree 
agreeable;  a  little  of  it  sets  one's  teeth  on  edge; 
it  is  a  crude  performance  of  the  trick.  But  such 
is  not  the  case  with  the  more  delicate  sounds 
when  varied  and  alternated  and  scattered  through- 
out a  passage  of  prose.  Ruskin  is  probably  the 
conspicuous  master  of  this  virtue.  Take,  for 
example,  the  following  passage,  by  no  means 
one  of  his  most  noteworthy,  from  The  Stones 
of  Venice: 

"It  is  the  /ace  of  a  man,  in  middZe  life,  /or 
there  are  two  deep  furrows  right  across  the  /ore- 
head,  dividing  it  Zike  the  /ouncZations  of  a  tower; 
the  height  of  it  above  is  bound  by  the  fillei  of 
the  cZucaZ  cap.  The  rest  of  the  /eatures  are 
singuZarZy  smaZZ  and  deZicate,  the  lips  sharp, 
perhaps  the  sharpness  of  death  being  added  to 
that  of  the  natural  lines;  but  there  is  a  sweet 
smile  upon  them,  and  a  deep  serenity  upon  the 
whole  countenance." 

Compare  this  with  the  following  revision  where 
the  words  are  used  without  regard  for  alliterative 
value: 


206        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

"Two  deep  lines  right  across  the  forehead 
indicate  that  the  subject  was  of  middle  age,  and 
these  divide  it  like  the  underpinning  of  a  tower 
[note  the  obscurity  of  the  clause  in  the  original 
also];  the  height  of  the  face  above  is  girdled  by 
the  band  of  the  cap  that  doges  wore.  All  the 
other  features  are  uncommonly  small  and  deli- 
cate, the  lips  thin,  perhaps  the  sharpness  of 
death  being  added  to  that  of  the  natural  lines; 
but  they  are  smiling  pleasantly  and  the  whole 
expression  is  one  of  deep  tranquillity." 

Such  use  of  consonants  is  largely  a  matter 
of  ear;  it  probably  came  easy  to  Ruskin  to 
write  thus;  certainly  it  is  something  of  a  task  to 
untwist  his  alliteration.  The  habit  is  one  that 
can  be  cultivated  without  great  difficulty  and 
with  some  success,  if  one  uses  judgment.  But  a 
word  of  caution  is  necessary.  Since  the  lan- 
guage contains  some  forty  sounds,  which  are 
represented  by  the  twenty-six  letters  of  the 
alphabet,  repetition  of  these  sounds  is  unavoid- 
able in  pieces  of  any  length.  Hence  many 
pieces  that  appear  to  be  deliberately  alliterative 
are  only  accidentally  so,  and  the  passages  where 
we  can  be  sure  that  even  a  Ruskin  went  out  of 
his  way  to  use  the  better  sounding  word  are 
comparatively  rare.  It  is,  notwithstanding, 
quite  proper  to  try  to  use  agreeable  instead  of 
unpleasant  repetitions. 

But  what  is  prose  rhythm?  That  is  really  the 
important  question.  Alliteration  and  assonance, 


STYLE:  PURE  MOVEMENT         207 

the  choice  of  nice  words,  may  help  to  make 
prose  pretty,  and  they  go  to  help  rhythm;  but 
what  is  prose  rhythm  as  distinguished  from  what 
we  have  seen  that  it  should  not  be,  metrical 
rhythm?  Rhythm  is  essentially  the  recurrence 
of  some  unit  of  length  and  accent,  allowing  for 
such  slight  variations  as  do  not  throw  one  out 
of  the  beat.  In  verse  the  unit  is  one  or  another 
kind  of  foot.  It  is  much  harder  to  say  what  the 
unit  is  in  prose;  but  in  spoken  prose  the  unit 
is  not  improbably  determined  by  what  may  be 
uttered  comfortably  at  a  breath,  and  this  again 
is  broken  into  groups  of  words,  or  phrases,  which 
go  together  in  sense,  as  may  be  verified  by 
reading  aloud.  In  written  prose  the  unit  may 
be  measured  also  by  what  the  eye  can  easily 
take  at  a  glance.  The  presence  or  the  perception 
of  rhythm  in  prose  will,  if  this  assumption  be 
true,  vary  with  the  capacity  of  the  speaker  or  the 
reader.  Thus  young  children  just  learning  to 
read,  have  no  sense  of  rhythm  but  read  word 
by  word;  thus  on  the  other  hand,  the  skilful  and 
resonant  speaker  may  fall  into  a  stride  or  swing 
or  compelling  intonation,  which,  despite  any- 
thing of  value  that  he  has  to  say,  may  winnow 
tears  from  certain  contingents  in  his  audience. 
Again,  narrative  dialogue  as  commonly  written 
has  no  rhythm;  whereas  the  conversation  of 
Johnson  as  reported  by  Boswell  carried  that 
quality  into  the  drawing-room.  A  succession 
of  short  sentences,  strongly  emphasized,  is  likely, 


208        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

from   excessive   staccato,   to   smother   any   real 
rhythm;   and  such  style  is  often  hectoring. 

Now  whether  this  unit  of  length  is  dependent 
or  not  on  capacity  of  lung  or  grasp  of  eye,  indi- 
vidual to  the  speaker  or  the  reader,  there  is  a 
certain  objective  aspect  of  the  matter;  which 
is  that,  of  whatever  length,  the  unit  is  (1)  recur- 
rent and,  often,  (2)  balanced,  not  only  inter- 
nally but  also  with  regard  to  other  units.  To 
make  the  matter  clearer  several  famous  sentences 
may  be  cited,  which  to  avoid  repetition  may  be 
so  spaced  as  to  bring  out  the  recurrence  of  the 
units  and  the  balances  in  them: 

Every  man  is  not  a  proper  champion 

for  Truth, 
Nor  fit  to  take  up  the  gauntlet 

in  the  cause  of  Verity.  —  Browne. 
He  that  dwelleth 

in  the  secret  place 

of  the  Most  High 
Shall  abide 

under  the  shadow 

of  the  Almighty.  —  Psalm  91. 
Or  ever  the  silver  cord  be  loosed, 
or  the  golden  bowl  be  broken, 
or  the  pitcher  be  broken 

at  the  fountain 
or  the  wheel  broken 

at  the  cistern. 
Then  shall  the  dust  return  to  the  earth 

as  it  was; 
And  the  spirit  shall  return  unto  God 

who  gave  it. 

—  Ecclesiastes,  12. 


STYLE:  PURE  MOVEMENT        209 

I  cannot  praise 

a  fugitive  and  cloistered  virtue, 
unexercised  and  unbreathed, 
that  never  sallies  out 

and  seeks  her  adversary, 
but  slinks  out  of  the  race 

where  that  immortal  garland 

is  to  be  run  for 
not  without  dust 

and  heat.  —  Milton. 

O  eloquent,  just  and  mighty  Death! 
whom  none  could  advise, 

thou  hast  persuaded; 
what  none  hath  dared, 

thou  hast  done; 
and  whom  all  the  world  hath  flattered, 

thou  only  hast  cast  out  of  the  world 

and  despised; 
Thou  hast  drawn  together 

all  the  far-stretched  greatness, 

all  the  pride,  cruelty,  and  ambition 

of  man, 
and  hast  covered  them  all  over 

with  these  two  narrow  words, 
Hie  jacet. 

Charity  suffereth  long 

and  is  kind; 
charity  envieth  not; 
charity  vaunteth  not  itself, 

is  not  puffed  up, 

Doth  not  behave  itself  unseemly, 
seeketh  not  its  own, 
is  not  easily  provoked, 
thinketh  no  evil; 


210       WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

Rejoiceth  not  in  iniquity, 
but  rejoiceth  in  the  truth; 

Beareth  all  things, 
believeth  all  things, 
hopeth  all  things, 
endureth  all  things. 

Charity  never  faileth; 

but  whether  there  be  prophecies, 

they  shall  fail; 
whether  there  be  tongues, 

they  shall  cease; 
whether  there  be  knowledge, 

it  shall  vanish  away. 

—  II.  Corinthians,  13. 

Clearly  these  recastings  are  somewhat  hazar- 
dous, since  there  is  in  prose,  unlike  verse,  no 
exact  finger  or  foot  rule.  Yet,  granted  that  the 
foregoing  is  a  not  unwarranted  breaking  of  the 
passages  into  units,  —  other  groupings  might 
be  better,  —  several  things  may  be  observed. 
(1)  The  units  in  any  one  passage  are  of  fairly 
equivalent  length,  and  (2)  the  units  that  are 
balanced  against  one  another  are  also  of  about 
the  same  size.  But  (3)  there  is  a  general  tendency 
for  the  latter  half  of  a  balance  to  be  prolonged 
over  the  first  member,  and  (4)  this  sometimes 
means  the  addition  of  extra  syllables,  as  in  Mil- 
ton's "and  heat,"  or  the  closing  "away"  in  the 
charity  passage.  (5)  Most  of  these  passages  are 
built  on  the  two-member  plan,  or  multiples  of 
two  members,  but  the  whole  of  the  Raleigh,  in 


STYLE:  PURE  MOVEMENT 

a  very  conspicuous  degree,  is  constructed  by 
various  triplets.  The  charity  passage  contains 
both  styles.  No  generalization  to  the  effect 
that  these  proportions  are  representative  of 
prose  is  of  course  intended.  (6)  Each  of  these 
units,  though  varying  in  length,  is  easy  to  say, 
and  the  uniformity  initiates  a  swing.  The 
nearest  that  we  can  get  to  any  "law"  of  prose 
rhythm  is  to  say  that  in  sentences  like  the  fore- 
going the  clauses  are  not  very  wide  apart  in  the 
number  of  syllables,  that  they  are  neither  choppy 
nor  cumbrous,  and  that  the  succession  of  units 
is  sufficiently  prolonged  to  set  up  a  suggestion 
of  regularity,  which  may  be  and  evidently  is, 
varied  from  paragraph  to  paragraph  and  even 
from  sentence  to  sentence. 

To  make  the  matter  clearer,  let  us  take  a 
passage  in  which  no  rhythm  is  discernable,  a 
good  clear  passage,  nevertheless,  where  there  is 
some  balance.  Rhythmless  passages  are  as  a 
matter  of  fact  rather  hard  to  find  among  good 
writers;  and  indeed  a  style  which  appears,  to 
the  eye,  to  be  rhythmless,  may  be  so  read  as  to 
contain  some  rises  and  falls. 

"  Chalk  occurs  in  north-west  Ireland;  it 
stretches  over  a  large  part  of  France,  —  the  chalk 
which  underlies  Paris  being,  in  fact,  a  continu- 
ation of  that  of  the  London  basin;  it  runs 
through  Denmark  and  Central  Europe,  and 
extends  southward  to  North  Africa;  while  east- 
ward, it  appears  in  the  Crimea  and  in  Syria,  and 


WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

may  be  traced  as  far  as  the  shores  of  the  Sea  of 
Aral,  in  Central  Asia." —  (Huxley:  On  a  Piece  of 
Chalk.} 

Evidently  it  would  be  somewhat  gratuitous  to 
impose  "style"  on  such  a  plain  statement  of 
fact  as  the  foregoing,  to  treat  it  a  la  Blackmore, 
for  example.  Yet,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  passages 
totally  devoid  of  some  kind  of  rhythm  are  not 
easy  to  find  among  competent  writers;  it 
appears  almost  as  if  a  writer,  once  in  possession 
of  any  art  of  writing,  would  fall  into  some  swing 
or  gait.  The  following  passage  from  a  writer 
who  wrought  his  prose,  for  the  most  part,  in 
intellectual  terms,  would  not  be  called  "rhyth- 
mic," but  it  evidently  has  rhythm  of  a  kind, 
obviously  not  that  of  the  famous  passages  just 
quoted. 

"This  distinction  between  wit  and  humour, 
Coleridge  and  other  kindred  critics  applied,  with 
much  effect,  in  their  studies  of  some  of  our  older 
English  writers.  And  as  the  distinction  between 
imagination  and  fancy,  made  popular  by  Words- 
worth, found  its  best  justification  in  certain 
essential  differences  of  stuff  in  Wordsworth's 
own  writings,  so  this  other  critical  distinction, 
between  wit  and  humour,  finds  a  sort  of  visible 
interpretation  and  instance  in  the  character  and 
writings  of  Charles  Lamb;  —  one  who  lived 
more  consistently  than  most  writers  among  subtle 
literary  theories,  and  whose  remains  are  still 
full  of  curious  interest  for  the  student  of  litera- 


STYLE:  PURE  MOVEMENT        213 

ture  as  a  fine  art."  —  (Walter  Pater:  Charles 
Lamb.) 

Of  nearly  all  the  foregoing  passages  one  special 
thing  should  be  noted  —  the  tendency  to  pro- 
long the  last  unit.  This  gives  to  sentences  what 
is  called  cadence  or  fall.  Cadences  are  also  fall- 
ings within  a  unit  or  clause,  and  they  presuppose 
some  corresponding  rise;  for  example,  "whom 
none  hath  advised,  thou  hast  persuaded;  what 
none  hath  dared,  thou  hast  done"  illustrates 
the  notion  of  rise  and  fall.  End  cadence  is  even 
more  common.  Here  are  two  passages  of  good 
quality,  of  which  the  first  has  little  end  cadence, 
and  the  second  tends  to  prolong  the  closing 
clauses : 

"Yet  hence  arises  a  grave  mischief.  The 
sacredness  which  attaches  to  the  act  of  creation, 
—  the  act  of  thought  —  is  instantly  transferred 
to  the  record.  The  poet  chanting  was  felt  to  be 
a  divine  man.  Henceforth  the  chant  is  divine 
also.  The  writer  was  a  just  and  wise  spirit. 
Henceforth  it  is  settled,  the  book  is  perfect; 
as  love  of  the  hero  corrupts  into  worship  of  his 
statue.  Instantly  the  book  becomes  noxious. 
The  guide  is  a  tyrant.  We  sought  a  brother,  and 
lo,  a  governor.  The  sluggish  and  perverted  mind 
of  the  multitude,  slow  to  open  to  the  incursions 
of  Reason,  having  once  so  opened,  having  once 
received  this  book,  stands  upon  it,  and  makes  an 
outcry  if  it  is  disparaged.  Colleges  are  built  on 
it.  Books  are  written  on  it  by  thinkers,  not  by 


214        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

Man  Thinking;  by  men  of  talent,  that  is,  who 
start  wrong,  who  set  out  from  accepted  dogmas, 
not  from  their  own  sight  of  principles.  Meek 
young  men  grow  up  in  libraries,  believing  it 
their  duty  to  accept  the  views  which  Cicero, 
which  Locke,  which  Bacon,  have  given;  forget- 
ful that  Cicero,  Locke,  and  Bacon  were  only 
young  men  in  libraries  when  they  wrote  these 
books."  —  (Emerson:  The  American  Scholar.) 

"  It  was  past  noon  of  a  day  brightened  with  the 
clear  sunlight  of  an  American  midsummer  when 
the  forces  of  Braddock  began  for  a  second  time 
to  cross  the  Monongahela,  at  the  fording-place, 
which  to  this  day  bears  the  name  of  their  ill- 
fated  leader.  The  scarlet  columns  of  the  British 
regulars,  complete  in  martial  appointment,  the 
rude  backwoodsmen  with  shouldered  rifles,  the 
trains  of  artillery  and  the  white-topped  wagons, 
moved  in  long  procession  through  the  shallow 
current,  and  slowly  mounted  the  opposing  bank. 
Men  were  there  whose  names  have  become  his- 
toric: Gage,  who,  twenty  years  later,  saw  his 
routed  battalions  recoil  in  disorder  from  before 
the  breastwork  on  Bunker  Hill;  Gates,  the 
future  conqueror  of  Burgoyne;  and  one  des- 
tined to  a  higher  fame,  —  George  Washington,  a 
boy  in  years,  a  man  in  calm  thought  and  self- 
ruling  wisdom."  —  (Parkman:  The  Conspiracy  of 
Pontiac.) 

In  even  the  first  passage,  which  is  uncom- 
monly abrupt,  even  for  Emerson,  and  in  which 


STYLE:  PURE  MOVEMENT        215 

balance  is  sacrificed  to  energy,  it  will  be  noted 
that  the  last  sentence  is  prolonged  into  a  cadence. 
Abundant  examples  of  what  may  be  handily 
called  "paragraph  cadence"  are  to  be  found  also 
in  Macaulay,  J.  R.  Green,  and  other  historians 
of  the  energetic  type;  whereas  the  balance  and 
plangency  of  Parkman  follows  the  Gibbon, 
Johnson,  Burke  tradition. 

On  the  subject  of  stylistic  origins,  however,  it 
is  not  wholly  safe  to  speculate.  But  one  may 
remark  that  the  very  common  trick,  in  English 
prose,  of  doubling  words,  of  being  not  content 
to  say  a  thing  with  one  word  when  two  will  do, 
may  revert  to  the  time  when  many  things,  to  be 
understood  of  the  multitude,  had  to  be  read 
aloud.  In  any  event  the  national  habit  finds 
expression  in  such  phrases  as  "all  sorts  and  con- 
ditions of  men,"  "humble  and  hearty  thanks," 
"live  and  move  and  have  our  being,"  "the  glass 
of  fashion  and  the  mould  of  form,"  "unhousel'd, 
disappointed,  unaneled,"  and  many  such  phrases 
very  agreeable  to  recite.  The  books  from  which 
they  are  taken  have  had  a  very  large  effect  on 
English  style. 

Of  the  preceding  quotations,  two  facts  should 
be  noted:  (1)  Whatever  rhythm  or  cadence 
they  have  is,  on  the  whole,  peculiar  to  them; 
they  illustrate  therefore  the  fact  of  the  existence 
of  rhythm  rather  than  set  up  a  model  of  rhythm 
to  be  followed.  For  (2)  they  are  all  exceptional 
passages;  they  are  either  renowned  or  have  to 


216        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

be  laboriously  hunted  up  to  prove  the  point. 
Let  us  therefore  quote  a  more  ordinary  passage 
just  to  illustrate  rhythm  and  cadence  in  any 
writing.  Here  is  a  random  passage  done  by  a 
competent  hand  but  conspicuous  in  no  respect,  in 
which,  however,  rhythm  and  cadence  go  a  long 
way  toward  keeping  up  the  movement:  I  take 
the  last  paragraph  that  I  have  read  in  a  book 
that  I  happen  to  be  reading: 

"For  a  whole  generation  at  least  this  question 
[i.  e.9  of  the  inheritance  of  acquired  character- 
istics] has  been  pressing  for  an  answer,  and  yet 
no  progress  has  been  made  with  it.  Yet  if  a 
tenth,  or  even  a  hundredth,  part  of  the  money 
which  is  devoted  to  research  in  physical  science, 
in  order  to  add  to  our  material  comforts  and  con- 
veniences, could  be  diverted  to  promote  the  study 
of  animal  behaviour,  this  problem  could  be  rapidly 
solved.  For  there  is  every  reason  to  believe  that 
the  answer  to  it  which  is  true  of  animals  is  true 
also  of  man." —  (W.  McDougall:  Psychology.) 

Stevenson,  who  played  with  sentences  as  a  kind 
of  game,  had  an  interesting  notion  of  movement 
which  accounts  for  technical  virtue  in  sentences 
in  a  different  way  from  the  foregoing  explanation. 
This  is  simply  that  you  dam  up  each  sentence 
for  a  moment  so  that  it  may  in  the  end  flow 
faster,  as  when  the  dams  saved  the  Union  fleet 
in  the  Red  River  expedition;  and  all  this  quite 
apart  from  any  regard  for  meaning  of  the  sen- 
tence. His  own  words  are  these: 


STYLE:  PURE  MOVEMENT        217 

"  Communication  may  be  made  in  broken 
words,  the  business  of  life  be  carried  on  with 
substantives  alone;  but  that  is  not  what  we  call 
literature;  and  the  true  business  of  the  literary 
artist  is  to  plait  or  weave  his  meaning,  involving 
it  around  itself;  so  that  each  sentence,  by  suc- 
cessive phrases  shall  first  come  into  a  kind  of 
knot,  and  then,  after  a  moment  of  suspended 
meaning,  solve  and  clear  itself.  In  every  properly 
constructed  sentence  there  should  be  observed 
this  knot  or  hitch;  so  that  (however  delicately) 
we  are  led  to  foresee,  to  expect,  and  then  to 
welcome  the  successive  phrases."  —  (On  Style  in 
Literature.) 

The  reader  will  observe  that  each  of  the  two 
sentences  quoted  illustrates  the  point  that 
Stevenson  makes.  He  goes  on  to  show  some 
of  the  ways  in  which  the  knot  may  be  tied: 

"The  pleasure  may  be  heightened  by  an  ele- 
ment of  surprise  as,  very  grossly,  in  the  common 
figure  of  the  antithesis,  or,  with  much  greater 
subtlety,  where  an  antithesis  is  first  suggested, 
and  then  deftly  evaded.  Each  phrase,  besides, 
is  to  be  comely  in  itself;  and  between  the  impli- 
cation and  the  evolution  of  the  sentence  there 
should  be  a  satisfying  equipoise  of  sound;  for 
nothing  more  often  disappoints  the  ear  than  a 
sentence  solemnly  and  sonorously  prepared,  and 
hastily  and  weakly  finished.  Nor  should  the 
balance  to  too  striking  and  exact,  for  the  one 
rule  is  to  be  infinitely  various;  to  interest,  to 


218        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

disappoint,  to  surprise,  and  yet  still  to  gratify; 
to  be  ever  changing,  as  it  were,  the  stitch,  and 
yet  still  to  give  the  effect  of  an  ingenious  neatness." 

This  is  an  extreme  technical  aspect  of  the  matter 
and  it  is  highly  entertaining;  but  it  may  be 
seriously  questioned  if  an  appeal  to  the  facts 
of  what  is  usually  regarded  as  pleasing  literature 
would  in  all  respects  substantiate  this  interesting 
view. 

The  gist  of  this  chapter  lies  in  fact  that  style, 
in  the  aspect  herein  treated,  may,  to  some  degree, 
be  regarded  as  a  technical  matter,  as  something 
apart  from  substance.  One  may  choose  words 
and  rhythms  simply  because  they  are  more 
agreeable.  He  may  go  so  far  as  to  distort  a 
word  from  its  usual  meaning  for  the  sake  of  the 
alliteration  or  balance;  as  did  Ruskin  on  more 
than  one  occasion;  for  example,  "We  usually 
believe  in  immortality,  so  far  as  to  avoid  prepa- 
ration for  death;  and  in  mortality,  so  far  as 
to  avoid  preparation  for  anything  after  death." 
—  (A  Crown  of  Wild  Olive.)  One  may  even  go  so 
far,  though  this  is  not  advised  by  the  best  au- 
thorities, as  did  the  man  in  The  Gilded  Age,  by 
Mark  Twain  and  C.  D.  Warner:  "Jeff  Thompson 
can  out-engineer  any  civil  engineer  that  ever 
sighted  through  an  aneroid,  or  a  theodolite,  or 
whatever  they  call  it  —  he  calls  it  sometimes 
one  and  sometimes  the  other  —  just  whichever 
levels  off  his  sentence  neatest,  I  reckon."  It  is 
important,  in  any  event,  that  style  should  swing 


STYLE:  PURE  MOVEMENT        219 

along  as  rapidly  and  smoothly  as  the  matter 
will  permit.  This  may  be  the  result  of  natural 
vigor  and  of  fire  for  one's  subject;  it  may  be 
aided  by  the  employment  of  a  more  or  less  me- 
chanical balance;  it  may  be  due  to  a  judicious 
revision  of  one's  words  and  phrases  until  they  go 
trippingly  over  the  page.  In  any  case  the  old 
precept  holds  good,  that  the  pains  and  the 
mechanism  should  not  appear,  that  the  effect 
should  be  as  in  the  oft-told  story  of  Tennyson, 
who  said  that  he  had  smoked  three  cigars  over 
a  line  that  seemed  to  be  most  spontaneous. 


CHAPTER  X 

STYLE  AND   COMPOSITION 

IN  the  foregoing  pages  composition  and  style 
have  been  treated  as  independent  matters  and 
each  has  been  analyzed  in  some  of  its  more 
important  aspects.  The  object  of  such  examina- 
tion of  parts  is,  as  has  been  said,  to  call  attention 
to  various  points  to  which  heed  may  be  given 
in  the  important  matters  of  planning  and  revision. 
It  must  also  be  constantly  borne  in  mind  that 
such  isolation  of  parts  does  not  at  all  correspond 
with  the  actual  process  of  composition,  any 
more  than  the  "cinematograph  method,"  referred 
to  in  Chapter  I,  describes  the  actual  process  of 
our  sensations  and  perceptions.  Even  if  we  go 
a  step  farther  and  attempt  to  connect  style  with 
composition,  difficulties  of  the  same  kind  will 
arise;  itfwill  still  be  impossible  to  give  a  satis- 
factory picture  of  what  writing,  as  an  active 
process,  really  is.  Certain  questions  as  to  what, 
for  want  of  a  better  term,  may  be  called  "rela- 
tivity of  style"  may,  however,  be  considered; 
for  a  frequent  inquiry  regards  the  relation  which 
style  bears  to  certain  kinds  of  composition,  to 
occasions,  and  to  subjects.  Such  relations  are 

220 


STYLE  AND  COMPOSITION 

implied  in  familiar  phrases  like  "a  good  nar- 
rative style,"  "  journalistic  writing,"  "a  command 
of  popular  exposition,"  "a  sound  style  of  argu- 
ment," "a  charming  bedside  manner,"  and  many 
others  concerning  which  the  funny  papers  often 
vent  themselves  in  jest  and  satire.  A  good  nar- 
rative style,  for  example,  is  popularly  supposed  to 
bristle  with  active  verbs  and  short,  swift,  sen- 
tences; a  journalistic  style  suggests  sententious- 
ness  and  a  solemn  concern  for  the  public  weal, 
the  settlement  of  the  affairs  of  the  universe  in  a 
few  paragraphs;  a  popular  style,  as  in  the 
magazines,  has  to  be  vivacious,  "catchy,"  and 
entertaining. 

The  phrases  are  well  enough  in  an  inexact 
way,  and  are  convenient.  But  trouble  comes, 
as  very  frequently,  when  a  narrator  or  journalist 
or  preacher  assumes  the  qualities  associated 
with  the  particular  style  to  be  the  matter  of 
prime  importance.  Of  this  habit  of  mind,  this 
predilection  for  imitating  the  wrong  thing, 
Lord  Morley  says  in  a  characteristically  brilliant 
passage: 

"Two  men  of  very  different  kinds  have  thor- 
oughly impressed  the  journalists  of  our  time, 
Macaulay  and  Mr.  Mill.  Mr.  Carlyle  we  do  not 
add  to  them;  he  is,  as  the  Germans  call  Jean  Paul, 
der  Einzige.  And  he  is  a  poet,  while  the  other 
two  are  in  their  degrees  serious  and  argumen- 
tative writers,  dealing  in  different  ways  with 
the  great  topics  that  constitute  the  matter  and 


222        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

business  of  daily  discussion.  They  are  both  of 
them  practical  enough  to  interest  men  handling 
real  affairs,  and  yet  they  are  general  or  theo- 
retical enough  to  supply  such  men  with  the 
large  and  ready  commonplaces  which  are  so 
useful  to  a  profession  that  has  to  produce  literary 
graces  and  philosophical  decorations  at  an  hour's 
notice.  It  might  be  said  of  these  two  distinguished 
men  that  our  public  writers  owe  most  of  their 
virtues  to  the  one,  and  most  of  their  vices  to 
the  other.  If  Mill  taught  some  of  them  to  reason, 
Macaulay  tempted  more  of  them  to  declaim: 
if  Mill  set  an  example  of  patience,  tolerance, 
and  a  fair  examination  of  hostile  opinions,  Macau- 
lay  did  much  to  encourage  oracular  arrogance, 
and  a  rather  too  thrasonical  complacency;  if 
Mill  sowed  ideas  of  the  great  economic,  political, 
and  moral  bearings  of  the  forces  of  society, 
Macaulay  trained  a  taste  for  superficial  par- 
ticularities, trivial  circumstantialities  of  local 
colour,  and  all  the  paraphernalia  of  the  pseudo- 
picturesque. 

"Of  course  nothing  so  obviously  untrue  is 
meant  as  that  this  is  on  account  of  Macaulay's 
own  quality.  What  is  empty  pretension  in  the 
leading  article,  was  often  a  warranted  self-asser- 
tion in  Macaulay;  what  in  it  is  little  more  than 
testiness  is  in  him  often  a  generous  indignation. 
What  became  and  still  remain  in  those  who 
have  made  him  their  model,  substantive  and 
organic  vices,  the  foundation  of  literary  character 


STYLE  AND  COMPOSITION        223 

and  intellectual  temper,  were  in  him  the  inciden- 
tal defects  of  a  vigorous  genius. "  —  (Macaulay.) 

Thus,  New  England  is  said  to  have  blossomed 
with  a  "small  infantry"  of  Emersons,  of  whom 
some  are  still  extant;  and  there  are  many  other 
examples. 

Handy  then  as  are  such  phrases  as  "narrative 
style"  or  "journalistic  style"  in  summing  up  and 
suggesting  certain  aspects  of  writing,  they  are 
likely  to  err  in  putting  the  cart  before  the 
horse,  or,  to  use  a  metaphor  more  suitable  to 
modern  methods  of  motion,  in  leaving  the  gaso- 
lene tank  behind.  Doubtless  certain  traditions  of 
desirability  in  manner  have  grown  up,  and  we 
assuredly  do  associate  certain  names  with  certain 
well-known  kinds  of  writing;  a  man's  manners, 
his  pose,  his  unexpected  turns,  or  half -expected 
turns,  of  phrase,  may  become  his  stock  in  trade 
and  the  chief  minister  to  his  fame  and  income. 
But,  philosophically,  the  case  is  different.  "To 
have  a  specific  style,"  said  Spencer  (The  Philoso- 
phy of  Style),  "is  to  be  poor  in  speech."  The 
cardinal  fact  is  that  style  is  never  twice  alike 
for  the  simple  reason  that  it  never  says  quite 
the  same  thing;  its  prime  duty  is  to  represent 
thought  as  exactly  as  possible,  with  the  best 
possible  movement.  Any  departure  from  this 
normal  aim  must  necessarily  be  due  to  the  quality 
of  an  audience  and  to  the  eminent  desirability  of 
having  sentences  and  paragraphs  run  as  smoothly 
as  possible. 


WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

Thus,  if  we  look  at  narration,  description,  expo- 
sition, and  argumentation,  we  shall  find  that 
styles  differ.  But  that  is  really  because  the  facts 
differ,  or,  in  other  words,  because  these  kinds  of 
composition  are  not  doing  the  same  thing.  In 
the  second  place,  differences  in  plan  and  manner 
are  to  some  degree  due  to  differences  of  occa- 
sion, time,  space,  and  audience:  it  would  be 
more  exact,  as  well  as  inclusive,  to  say  that 
time,  space,  and  audience,  as  well  as  habit  of 
mind,  cause  the  selection  and  presentation  of 
the  facts  to  be  somewhat  modified.  In  any 
event,  one  will  presumably  write  as  smoothly, 
with  as  easy  a  technical  movement,  as  one's 
ear  and  training  permits  one  to  write.  Therefore, 
when  we  say  that  narrative  style  abounds  in 
active  verbs  and  short  sentences,  we  really  mean 
that  active  verbs  represent  action  better  than  do, 
say,  abstract  nouns.  But  this  statement  is  only 
very  generally  true.  You  will  not  find  so  many 
active  verbs  in  the  narrative  of  Mr.  Henry 
James  or  De  Quincey  as  in  Treasure  Island  or 
The  Hound  of  the  BasJcervilles;  which  is  but  an 
indication  of  the  fact,  or  another  way  of  stating 
the  fact,  that  the  matter  is  different.  Descrip- 
tion doubtless  contains  the  names  of  many 
objects  and  many  adjectives  to  describe  them; 
but,  then,  any  one  who  is  describing  has  to  deal 
with  the  names  of  objects  and  with  appropriate 
adjectives.  Exposition  may  use  many  particular 
words  and  many  general  words,  concrete  words 


STYLE  AND  COMPOSITION 

and  abstract  words;  there  is  no  rule  except  that 
the  expounder  shall  use  such  words  of  statement 
or  of  illustration  or  of  what  not,  as  shall  state, 
or  illustrate,  or  what  not.  Burke  and  Chatham 
are  not  palpably  mightier  men  of  argument  than 
Mill  or  Darwin,  but  they  did  not  argue  about  the 
same  things,  and  hence  are  different.  Again,  if 
they  are  more  flowery  and  persuasive  in  type, 
that  is  because  active  politics  are  a  warmer  mat- 
ter for  discussion  than  scientific  analysis,  and  be- 
cause the  procedure  of  speech-making  takes  more 
promptly  into  consideration  the  prejudices  and 
the  immediate  reactions  of  audiences. 

Or  again,  there  would  be  no  special  reason 
why  a  man  of  science  might  not  cultivate  a 
"journalistic"  style  if  he  wished  to  do  so.  The 
reason  that  he  does  not  is  probably  because  the 
facts  with  which  he  deals  have  to  be  exactly 
stated,  at  all  hazards,  and  this  exactness  can 
often  be  compassed  only  by  technical  language; 
and  because,  also,  his  habit  of  mind  is  said  to 
be  chary  of  those  far-reaching  generalizations 
and  all-embracing  platitudes  which  are  the  delight 
and  ornament  of  the  press  and  the  pulpit.  There 
is,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  a  noticeable  dearth  of  good 
popular  exposition  of  scientific  matters,  alike 
true  to  fact  and  "  understanded  of  the  public." 
A  writer  who  can  follow  his  facts  truthfully  and 
can  at  the  same  time  temper  his  statement  to 
his  audience  in  an  interesting  way  is  a  pearl  of 
price,  in  proportion  to  the  value  of  his  facts. 


226        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

If  such  terms  as  "a  journalistic  style"  are  used, 
as  not  infrequently,  in  contempt,  it  is  simply 
because  any  truth  or  value  of  facts  is  sacri- 
ficed to  some  assumption  of  style,  to  oracular 
utterance,  or  to  clever  sayings.  Oratory  is  a 
special  sinner  in  this  way;  hence  there  arises 
a  fine  array  of  names  often  applied  to  oratorical 
and  linguistic  effects  —  tosh,  bathos,  buncome,  rot, 
spellbinding,  pompous,  inflated,  catchpenny,  clap- 
trap, and  the  like.  The  shoemaker  goes  beyond 
his  last:  his  words,  in  one  detail  or  another,  do 
not  fit  his  facts. 

Any  justification  for  specific  styles,  apart 
from  the  matter  to  be  expressed,  lies,  then,  in 
their  being  a  kind  of  lubricant.  If  an  audience 
is  used  to  a  manner,  if  it  will  better  grasp  the 
subject  and  be  impressed  by  a  manner  that 
it  is  used  to,  by  all  means  that  manner  may  be 
regarded  as  a  good  thing.  Knowing  what  to 
expect  —  as  that  an  opposition  paper  will  always 
denounce  the  government,  or  that  a  book-re- 
viewer will  always  treat  isolated  and  exceptional 
details  as  if  they  were  representative,  or  that 
Mark  Twain  is  always  funny,  or  Shakespeare 
always  sublime  and  poetical,  or  Mr.  Chesterton 
invariably  paradoxical  —  is  a  great  help  in 
reading,  even  though  there  may  be  palpable 
exceptions  to  the  formula.  Dominant  uni- 
formity would  be  a  great  asset,  as  the  youth 
thought  who  remarked  that  some  of  Montaigne's 
essays  didn't  sound  a  bit  like  Montaigne,  was 


STYLE  AND  COMPOSITION 

baffled  by  a  note  of  facetiousness  in  the  Times, 
and  found  himself  unable  to  laugh  at  all  the 
passages  in  Huckleberry  Finn.  "To  have  a 
specific  style  is  to  be  poor  in  speech,"  and  to 
attempt  to  find  the  laws  for  the  relativity  of 
style  is  to  partake  of  the  pastime  of  pursuing 
wild  geese. 

In  general,  the  matter  presents  itself  somewhat 
as  follows:  Certain  things  are  to  be  said.  These 
a  writer  arranges  in  any  order  that  will  be  most 
comprehensible,  but  the  nature  of  the  material 
makes  one  kind  of  composition  fitter  than  another. 
The  desideratum  is  so  to  arrange  ideas  that  the 
easiest  movement  from  one  to  another  will  result. 
Paragraphing  may  be  a  great  aid  in  the  move- 
ment, and  such  principles  as  unity  and  emphasis 
and  coherence  may  properly  be  observed.  When 
it  comes  to  style,  that  is,  manner  of  writing,  the 
fundamental  aim  is  to  use  such  language  as  will 
most  exacly  stand  for  the  ideas  to  be  expressed, 
of  whatever  kind.  The  great  question  regarding 
any  particular  word,  phrase,  or  sentence  is  this: 
"Does  it  say  what  I  wish  it  to  say  in  terms 
that  will  be  understood?"  Beyond  that  there 
arises  the  important  question  of  taste,  or  interest, 
or  smoothness  —  the  question:  "Could  the 
expression  be  made  more  interesting  or  agree- 
able, without  detriment  to  the  idea?"  Predi- 
cation, connotation,  and  technical  smoothness, 
that  is,  rhythm  and  cadence,  are  the  main  points 
to  which  attention  may  in  detail  be  directed. 


WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

The  fundamental  rule  of  writing  is,  then,  to 
"write  with  your  eye  on  the  object."  And  the 
second  is  not  at  variance  with  it:  Be  as  exact, 
use  as  interesting  expressions  as  your  subject 
and  your  audience  will  allow  you  to,  and  write 
as  smoothly  as  you  can;  but  do  not  cultivate 
style  or  dally  with  a  style. 


CHAPTER  XI 

METHODS  AND  APPLICATIONS 

SUCH  as  have  been  explained  are  the  essential 
facts  about  composition  and  style;  and  such  are 
the  principal  points  at  which  our  formal  knowl- 
edge of  these  matters  may  be  applied  to  the 
actual  process  of  writing.  A  final  chapter  may 
not  improperly  be  given  to  a  description  of  cer- 
tain methods  in  current  use  for  the  acquisition 
of  skill  in  composition.  We  have  already  seen 
what  writing  as  a  specific  process  really  is:  it 
is  planning  what  you  have  to  say,  saying  it,  and 
revising  it  as  much  as  may  be  convenient  or 
necessary  before  giving  it  to  an  antagonistic  or 
amenable  audience.  We  have  now  to  deal  with 
matters  of  general  preparation,  though  some 
reference  to  specific  practice  will  be  necessary. 
In  the  following  pages  nothing  else  is  attempted 
than  a  recital  of  the  more  important  matters  as 
they  have  been  actually  advised  or  practised. 
The  point  is  not  to  tell  people  how  to  write  (the 
idea  of  doing  such  a  thing!)  but  merely  to  sum- 
marize certain  of  the  outstanding  types  of  pre- 
cept and  of  practice,  which  one  may  or  may  not 
take  to  heart.  So  various  are  these  counsels 

229 


230        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

that  a  good  classification  of  them  is  somewhat 
difficult;  but  they  may  be  conveniently  treated 
under  the  heads  of  (1)  knowledge  and  vocabulary, 
(2)  imitation  and  (3)  methods  of  practice.  These 
divisions,  as  is  but  natural,  run  into  each  other 
at  all  points. 

Vocabulary,  that  is,  a  knowledge  of  the  meaning 
of  words,  is  fundamental  to  writing,  and  hence  a 
goodly  amount  of  advice  is  given  as  to  the  acqui- 
sition of  words.  What  the  precepts  amount  to 
may  best  be  seen  if  we  regard  everybody  as  having 
a  speaking  or  a  writing  vocabulary  —  a  vocabu- 
lary of  expression  —  and  a  hearing  or  a  reading 
vocabulary  —  a  vocabulary,  so  to  speak,  of 
impression.  That  is  to  say,  every  one  has  a  set 
of  words  that  he  uses  in  talk  or  in  writing  and  a 
much  larger  number  that  he  more  or  less  clearly 
understands  when  he  hears  them  or  sees  them 
in  print.  The  second  group  is  probably  several 
times  as  large  as  the  first,  and  for  several  reasons : 
no  one  person  is  likely  to  have  so  much  occasion 
for  many  different  words  as  are  the  many  people 
whom  he  listens  to  or  reads;  the  occasions  for 
speaking  are  usually  comparatively  simple, 
calling  for  few  words,  which,  again,  are  eked  out 
by  gesture  and  emphasis;  one  is  likely  to  speak 
and  write,  ordinarily,  of  familiar  things,  but  his 
reading  may  often  take  him  into  strange  regions 
of  thought;  the  speaker  and  writer,  too,  has  to 
call  up  words  from  his  storehouse,  unaided, 
whereas  every  word  that  one  hears  or  reads  is 


METHODS  AND  APPLICATIONS    231 

bolstered  up  by  context.  There  are  many 
other  reasons  going  to  show  that  a  man  ordi- 
narily understands  five  or  ten  times  as  many 
words  as  he  can  use  or  would  be  likely  to  use  in 
the  usual  walks  and  talks  of  life. 

Evidently  the  process  of  acquiring  words  for 
writing  is  (1)  the  adding  to  the  reading  vocabu- 
lary by  extensive  and  intensive  methods,  — 
borrowing  the  farmer's  phrase,  —  that  is,  by 
getting  to  know  unfamiliar  words,  and  by  making 
familiar  words  more  exact  in  denotation  or  rich 
in  suggestion.  The  process  is  partly  an  affair 
of  the  dictionary,  but  it  is  more  a  matter  of  hearing 
and  reading.  (2)  The  second  act  is  the  trans- 
ferring of  as  many  words  as  possible  from  the 
realm  of  recognition  to  the  domain  of  practical 
mastery.  These  are,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the 
ways  in  which  knowledge  of  words  is  gained, 
however  much  the  process  may  vary  in  detail. 

Following  this,  we  actually  find  certain  kinds 
of  advice  given  for  the  enrichment  and  extension 
of  our  holdings  in  the  mother  tongue.  At  one 
extreme  is  literary  browsing,  wherein  one  wanders 
widely  in  writing,  cropping  ideas  and  words  that 
are  to  his  liking, 

"Chewing  the  cud  of  sweet  and  bitter  fancy." 

Some  of  these  may  stick.  Herein  one  throws 
open  larger  fields  for  pasturage  than  are  available 
in  the  ordinary  range  of  talk,  books,  and  news- 
papers. The  method  may  be  elaborated  and  the 


232       WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

results  made  more  definite  by  the  use  of  dic- 
tionaries and  explanatory  notes.  In  general,  it 
is  by  processes  of  this  kind  that  the  stream  of 
literary  and  learned  English,  if  such  a  thing  may 
be  regarded  as  apart  from  everyday  English, 
is  kept  in  motion  in  every  increasing  volume. 

At  the  other  extreme  are  the  deliberate  methods 
which  counsel  the  explicit  transference  of  so 
many  words  from  one  vocabulary  to  the  other. 
Men  have  been  known  —  Browning,  for  example, 
and  Chatham  —  practically  to  learn  the  diction- 
ary from  end  to  end.  But  that  was  before  the 
day  of  Dr.  Murray  and  the  Century;  and  in  any 
event  the  task  is  reserved  for  special  souls.  Bet- 
ter advice  for  ordinary  mortals  is  such  as  is  given 
by  Professor  G.  H.  Palmer  in  a  valuable  and 
stimulating  little  book,  Self -Cultivation  in  English, 
which  suggests  the  acquisition  of  two  new  words 
a  day.  The  14,600  words  that  one  would  acquire 
by  this  method  in  twenty  years  (not  allowing 
for  leap  years)  would,  when  conjoined  to  one's 
former  outfit  and  one's  pickings  up  by  the  way, 
probably  make  one  the  literary  Carnegie  of  the 
generation  —  provided  he  could  find  any  means 
for  disposing  of  all  his  wealth.  Even  the  Im- 
mortal Bard  of  Avon  hadn't  so  many  words  as 
this,  though,  to  be  sure,  he  had  a  lively  habit 
of  using  any  word  in  about  any  sense  that  came 
handy.  The  practice  takes  very  little  time  when 
the  habit  is  once  set  up. 
«.  A  very  special  and  limited  kind  of  advice 


METHODS  AND  APPLICATIONS    233 

regarding  vocabulary  is  to  be  found  in  the  many 
extant "  don't  say,"  or  "  don't  use  "  books.  Stand- 
ing for  this  type  are  lists  of  words  commonly 
mispronounced  or  misspelled  or  misused,  tables 
of  "preferable  expressions,"  and  many  other 
worthy  compilations.  Logically,  they  do  no 
more  than  "stake  out  the  claim"  of  style,  but 
they  are  very  useful  for  any  one  who,  wishing  to 
avoid  current  solecisms  and  inferior  idioms,  makes 
up  his  mind  to  conform  to  conventional  literary 
usage.  Errors  cited  in  such  books  are  by  no 
means  of  equal  moment,  but  any  one  is  safe  in 
sticking  to  the  text,  provided  he  does  not  make 
his  knowledge  an  occasion  for  the  display  of  the 
odium  philologicum.  Such  books  do  not  and  are 
evidently  not  intended  to  take  the  place  of  the 
more  positive  and  valuable  acquisitions  of  which 
we  have  spoken. 

A  far  more  important  kind  of  advice,  therefore, 
a  piece  of  advice  having  to  do  with  the  real 
functions  of  words,  is  always  to  regard  them  as 
standing  for  ideas,  that  is,  for  objects,  data,  con- 
cepts, feelings,  etc.  In  one  sense,  it  is  impossible 
to  learn  words  apart  from  ideas;  for  a  word 
will  convey  no  meaning  whatever  if  we  are  not 
in  some  way  acquainted  —  directly,  or  by  de- 
scription, or  by  inference  —  with  some  part  of 
the  idea  for  which  it  stands.  All  vagueness  and 
ambiguity  of  wording  is  at  bottom  the  result 
of  indefinite  application  of  word  to  idea.  The 
idea  is  the  important  thing;  the  word  merely 


234        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

represents  that.  The  good  word  habit  is  simply 
the  habit  of  using  the  word  ordinarily  associated 
with  the  idea  that  one  wishes  to  express;  the 
excellent  word  habit,  that  of  making  these 
familiar  words  suggest  new  meanings  and  ideas. 
The  necessity  of  thinking  of  ideas  and  of  know- 
ing the  words  that  will  stand  for  these  ideas  has 
often  been  insisted  upon:  you  will  find  New- 
man's words  about  the  matter  in  The  Idea  of  a 
University  and  admirable  illustrations  of  it  in 
Mark  Twain's  Following  the  Equator  (Vol.  2, 
Chap.  25),  and  there  are  many  others. 

The  acquiring  of  vocabulary,  in  any  decent 
sense  of  the  word,  is  primarily  a  matter  of  ac- 
quiring knowledge,  whether  of  facts  or  of  one's 
play  on  those  facts.  The  statement  may  be 
made  despite  the  well-known  observation  that 
many  men  of  great  learning  do  not  write  at  all 
well;  their  literary  skill  does  not  keep  up  with 
what  they  know;  they  do  not  know  how  to  write 
except  in  a  bare,  bald  way.  Hence  a  type  of 
counsel  arises  regarding  the  material  and  the 
arrangement  thereof.  This  has  been  propounded 
less  for  the  sake  of  the  erudite,  than  for  that 
large  class  of  young  writers  who,  having  subjects 
and  some  facts,  do  not  know  how  to  think  in  any 
terms  at  all  useful  to  English  composition  — 
but  it  may  also  apply  elsewhere.  Suggestions  are 
contained  in  series  of  questions,  such  as,  "What 
does  this  subject  mean?"  "What  do  I  know 
about  it?"  "What  do  I  think  about  it,  and 


METHODS  AND  APPLICATIONS    235 

why?"  "Whither  does  it  lead?"  "Why  is  it 
interesting?  "  " How  may  it  be  divided?  "  "  Will 
my  reader  be  interested  in  it  or  understand  it 
as  I  do?"  "What  do  I  wish  to  say  to  my  cor- 
respondent?" The  answers  to  such  questions, 
though  they  may  never  result  in  a  lively  style, 
will  often  set  a  literary  ball  a-rolling;  and  to 
set  something  going  and  keep  up  the  sense  of 
motion  is,  as  we  have  seen,  essential  to  composi- 
tion. 

Hence  arises  a  variety  of  counsels  regarding 
planning  or  arrangement  of  material,  and  these 
fall  into  the  extremes  of  the  desultory  and  the 
formal  methods.  According  to  the  first,  ideas 
beget  ideas,  inspirations  follow  inspirations;  you 
follow  them  whithersoever  they  lead.  Much 
good  literature  has  been  produced  on  this  prin- 
ciple, as  witness  Emerson,  Hazlitt,  Holmes,  and 
many  others,  but  it  is  not  usually  so  much  recom- 
mended for  the  purposes  of  instruction  as  is  the 
more  formal  type.  In  the  latter  you  make 
deliberate  arrangements:  you  may  be  advised, 
for  example,  to  plot  out  your  work  with  great 
care;  perhaps  the  best  way,  certainly  a  good  way, 
is  to  write  down  separate  ideas  on  separate  slips 
of  paper,  and  when  all  are  there,  to  shift  them 
about,  as  in  a  sort  of  stylistic  solitaire,  till  a 
good  order  comes  out.  Or  one  is  advised  to  jot 
down  on  separate  sheets  what  a  thing  is,  what  it  is 
not,  what  it  is  like,  or  to  set  down  facts  in  one 
column  and  opinions  in  another.  All  such  schemes 


236        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

and  devices  are  a  great  help  in  the  early  stages  of 
engineering  ideas  for  publication.  But,  as  we 
shall  see  later,  there  is  no  warrant  for  laying  down 
any  law  in  this  matter. 

The  term  "literary  browsing,"  used  a  few 
paragraphs  previously,  suggests  another  general 
method  or  set  of  processes  by  which  the  acqui- 
sition of  the  writing  trick  is  sometimes  advised. 
Herein  are  comprised  the  various  phenomena  of 
imitation.  We  recognize  the  large  part  that 
imitation  plays  in  the  formation  of  habits  and 
customs  and  in  the  general  development  of 
youth;  we  might,  omitting  such  evident  truths, 
go  so  far  as  to  say  that  without  imitation  there 
could  be  no  such  thing  as  literary  tradition. 
Hence  imitation  may  be  called  the  salt  or  the 
prophylactic  of  literature.  Now,  so  far  as  com- 
position is  concerned,  imitation  may  be  merely 
oozing  and  seepage,  or,  at  the  other  extreme,  it 
may  be  very  deliberately  carried  on.  Their 
bearing  on  English  composition  is  but  a  small 
part  of  the  alleged  value  of  "  Lists  of  One  Hundred 
Best  Books,"  of  "Five  Foot  Shelves,"  of  Emer- 
son's advice  to  avoid  all  books  less  than  five 
years  old  (or  was  it  one?  In  any  event,  his  own 
readers  did  not  follow  his  advice),  of  "standard" 
reading,  and  many  other  things  which  all  of  us 
in  our  moments  of  moral  levity  are  accustomed 
to  waft  to  solemn  young  audiences.  Of  delib- 
erate imitation  one  may  profitably  cite  the 
classical  examples  of  Franklin  and  Stevensoa 


METHODS  AND  APPLICATIONS    237 

as  instances  of  what  the  method  is  alleged  to 
have  accomplished.  The  former,  in  his  Auto- 
biography, tells  us  that  being  delighted  with  an 
odd  volume  of  the  Spectator,  he  set  himself  to 
imitate  it.  "With  this  view  I  took  some  of  the 
papers,  and  making  short  hints  of  the  sentiment 
of  each  sentence,  laid  them  by  a  few  days,  and 
then,  without  looking  at  the  book,  tried  to  com- 
plete the  papers  again,  by  expressing  each 
hinted  sentiment  at  length,  as  fully  as  it  had 
been  expressed  before,  in  any  suitable  words  that 
should  come  to  hand.  Then  I  compared  my 
Spectator  with  the  original,  discovered  some  of 
my  faults,  and  corrected  them."  He  goes  on  to 
tell  how,  finding  his  vocabulary  insufficient,  he 
turned  prose  tales  into  verse;  "and,  after  a 
time,  when  I  had  pretty  well  forgotten  the  prose, 
turned  them  back  again."  Besides  the  imita- 
tion, the  value  of  the  practice  in  verse  lay  in  the 
fact  that  "the  continual  occasion  for  words  of 
the  same  import,  but  of  different  length,  to  suit 
the  measure,  or  of  different  sound  for  the  rime, 
would  have  laid  me  under  the  constant  neces- 
sity of  searching  for  variety,  and  also  have 
tended  to  fix  that  variety  in  my  mind,  and  make 
me  master  of  it."  He  also  "jumbled  his  collec- 
tions of  hints  into  confusion,"  in  order,  after 
some  weeks,  to  "reduce  them  to  the  best  order, 
before  I  began  to  form  the  full  sentences  and 
complete  the  paper." 

Stevenson  tells  us  in  A  College  Magazine,  that 


238        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE' 

though  he  constantly  practised  description  and 
other  forms  of  composition,  and  kept  diaries, 
the  most  efficient  part  of  his  training  lay  in 
imitation.  The  former  method,  "only  taught 
me  (so  far  as  I  have  learned  them  at  all)  the  lower 
and  less  intellectual  elements  of  the  art,  the  choice 
of  the  essential  note  and  the  right  word,  — 
things  that  to  a  happier  constitution  had  perhaps 
come  by  nature.  And  regarded  as  training  it 
had  one  grave  defect;  for  it  set  me  no  standard 
of  achievement.  So  that  there  was  perhaps  more 
profit,  as  there  was  certainly  more  effort,  in  my 
secret  labors  at  home.  Whenever  I  read  a  book 
or  a  passage  that  particularly  pleased  me,  in 
which  a  thing  was  said  or  an  effect  rendered 
with  propriety,  in  which  there  was  either  some 
conspicuous  force  or  some  happy  distinction  in 
the  style,  I  must  sit  down  at  once  and  set  myself 
to  ape  that  quality.  I  was  unsuccessful,  and  I 
knew  it;  and  tried  again,  and  was  again  unsuc- 
cessful and  always  unsuccessful;  but,  at  least, 
in  these  vain  bouts  I  got  some  practice  in 
rhythm,  in  harmony,  in  construction,  and  in  the 
co-ordination  of  parts."  And  he  goes  on  to  tell 
us  that  he  "played  the  sedulous  ape  to  Hazlitt," 
and  other  conspicuous  writers  of  quality.  And 
he  concludes,  giving  instances  —  Keats,  Mon- 
taigne, Shakespeare,  Burns  —  of  the  practice  of 
imitation,  "That,  like  it  or  not,  is  the  way  to 
learn  to  write;  whether  I  have  profited  or  not, 
that  is  the  way." 


METHODS  AND  APPLICATIONS    239 

Doubtless  that  is  a  way,  and  a  very  good  one, 
if  you  have  the  time  and  energy.  There  are  also 
many  other  ways,  and  some  of  the  forms  that 
exercises  in  composition  tend  to  assume  may 
profitably  be  named.  Training  in  composition 
is  far  more  extensive  to-day  than  ever  before; 
writing  tends  to  become  a  dernocratical  rather 
than  an  aristocratical  pursuit.  Large  masses 
of  young  people,  especially  in  America,  are  sub- 
jected to  exercises  in  composition.  Four  types 
of  exercise  may  be  mentioned. 

First,  there  is  the  translation  type.  Herein, 
ideas  are  given  one  ready-made;  one  has  no 
trouble  with  seeking  ideas  or  with  arranging  them. 
All  one  has  to  do  is  to  render  the  ideas  into 
English.  Just  what  English  may  mean  in  this 
connection  is  a  trifle  uncertain :  it  may  be  English 
equivalent  in  quality  to  the  quality  of  the  original; 
it  may  be  good  literary  English;  it  may  be  free 
rendering,  or  exact  translation,  or  various  other 
things  about  which  there  is  a  good  bit  of  disputing, 
as  may  be  judged  from  a  perusal  of  Arnold's 
On  Translating  Homer.  In  any  event,  the  student 
busies  himself  with  style.  Enthusiasts  for  the 
method  maintain  that  this  is  the  only  way  to 
learn  to  write,  and  evidently  such  arguments 
crystallize  into  the  common  saying  that  the  only 
way  to  learn  to  write  English  is  through  the 
study  of  the  classics,  which  are  said  to  have 
the  further  advantage  of  being  less  inflated  than 
ordinary  English.  Then  when  a  young  man  is 


240        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

sufficiently  trained  in  rewording  foreign  ideas, 
he  may  be  turned  loose  on  ideas  of  his  own.  This 
is,  on  the  whole,  the  alleged  traditional  British 
type  of  practice,  and  it  may  be  conveniently 
designated  as  such. 

Another  kind  of  practice,  probably  not  used 
to  anything  like  its  full  value  in  England  and 
America,  consists  in  writing  out  sentences,  singly 
and  successively,  in  a  variety  of  ways,  in  order 
to  acquire  the  sense  of  shades  of  meaning.  This 
method  of  training  is  said  to  be  of  French  origin 
and  to  be  used  very  extensively  in  France.  To 
its  use  in  French  schools  is  sometimes  attri- 
buted the  variety  and  flexibility  and  exactness 
that  distinguish  French  style  over  the  style  of 
other  peoples. 

In  America,  especially,  a  good  deal  of  time 
is  spent  on  analysis:  you  watch  how  the  thing 
has  been  done,  not  for  the  purpose,  as  did  Ste- 
venson, of  imitating  that  thing,  but  in  order  to 
see  the  processes  —  in  sentence,  paragraph,  and 
longer  work  —  and  apply  any  observed  princi- 
ples to  your  own  ideas.  Analysis  takes  several 
forms.  There  is  the  so-called  "  rhetorical  analy- 
sis," wherein  "effects"  and  other  kinds  of  data 
are  noted,  and  the  causes  analyzed.  On  its  more 
mechanical  side,  no  form  of  intellectual  exercise 
ever  resulted  in  the  production  of  a  greater 
variety  of  entirely  uninteresting  and,  for  the 
purposes  of  composition,  of  wholly  useless  facts, 
as  that  Macaulay's  sentences  average  about 


METHODS  AND  APPLICATIONS    241 

twenty-three  words,  or  that  Keats  has  so  many 
grays,  so  many  blue-greens,  so  many  yellows, 
purples,  ultra-violets  in  Lamia  and  so  many  in 
The  Eve  of  St.  Agnes;  or  that,  since  Burke  uses 
such  and  such  percentage  of  Latin  words,  and 
since  Burke  is  as  good  a  writer  as  is,  therefore 
a  good  style  contains  so  and  so  many  per  cent  of 
Latin  derivatives.  On  the  other  hand,  an  analy- 
sis which  reveals  any  individual  and  character- 
istic tricks  or  turns  of  style  and  expression  may 
easily  be  fruitful  both  in  appreciation  and  in 
composition. 

Analysis  also  takes  the  form  of  examining 
structure,  of  making  paragraph  summaries, 
briefs,  and  other  digests  of  good  pieces  of  com- 
position. The  aim  is  to  inculcate,  by  good,  care- 
ful work,  the  idea  of  structure.  And  the  fact 
is  that  when  a  student  has  worked  over  a  score 
of  good  pieces  of  different  kinds  on  different 
subjects,  noting  occasions  and  dispositions,  he 
will  have  a  much  better  notion  of  order  and  the 
possibilities  of  arrangement  than  he  could  prob- 
ably get  in  any  other  way.  He  may  not  wish 
to  imitate  any  one  of  these,  but  he  has  a  set 
of  very  valuable  tools  to  help  him  carve  out  his 
own  ideas. 

Another  form  of  analysis  is  running  summary, 
and  it  is  a  very  good  thing  to  practise,  not  only 
for  style  but  for  the  training  of  the  mind.  Un- 
like the  method  used  by  Franklin,  you  try  to 
reproduce,  in  shorter  space,  not  the  form,  but 


WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

the  idea,  in  as  good  English  as  you  can.  Prac- 
tically, it  is  a  very  useful  kind  of  training;  for 
to  know  how  to  state  the  gist  of  an  idea,  a  situ- 
ation, a  scene,  is  a  valuable  acquisition.  Provided 
one  attends  to  expression  by  the  way,  the  sum- 
mary method  of  practice  has  obvious  advantages 
over  translation,  in  that  one  has  to  do  a  little 
organizing  for  oneself.  These  methods  of  analy- 
sis and  summary  may,  to  carry  out  the  loosely 
applied  figure  with  which  we  started,  be  called 
the  American  type  of  exercise.  These  epithets 
are,  obviously,  not  exclusive. 

A  fourth  type  of  exercise,  not  translation, 
or  sentence-making,  or  analysis  of  whatever 
kind  consists  in  formal  practice  in  various  forms 
of  writing  —  narration,  description,  etc.  Mr. 
Frederic  Harrison  speaks  "with  sorrow"  of 
"the  habit  which  has  grown  up  in  the  university 
(Oxford)  since  my  day  —  the  habit  of  making  a 
considerable  part  of  the  education  of  the  place 
to  turn  on  the  art  of  serving  up  gobbets  of  pre- 
pared information  in  essays  more  or  less  smooth 
and  correct  —  more  or  less  successful  imitations 
of  the  viands  that  are  cooked  for  us  daily  in  the 
press."  —  (On  English  Prose.)  The  objection  does 
not  appear  to  be  very  weighty.  Granted  that  it 
is  worth  while  trying  to  learn  to  express  one- 
self with  more  ease  and  accuracy  than  come  to 
the  untutored  mind,  why  should  any  reasonable 
means  for  furthering  that  end  be  neglected,  so 
long  as  more  important  matters  are  not  thrust 


METHODS  AND  APPLICATIONS       243 

aside?  As  to  this  last  clause,  opinions  naturally 
vary,  but  the  phenomenon  of  a  very  widespread 
practice  is  evidently  based  on  the  fact,  or  the 
assumption  of  the  fact,  that  such  methods  pro- 
duce good  results  and  that  the  matter  is  of  suffi- 
cient concern  to  warrant  making  the  effort.  It 
is  worth  while  to  learn  to  write  respectably,  and 
if  one  is  to  learn  to  write  respectably,  it  is  better 
that  he  begin  under  tutelage  than  be  left  wholly 
unguided  —  unless  he  is  a  genius.  That  is,  of 
course,  the  justification  for  the  traditional  exer- 
cises in  Latin  verse  in  English  universities  and 
for  the  elaborate  courses  in  literary  forms,  par- 
ticularly in  the  short  story  and  in  argumentative 
composition  that  are  just  now  much  in  vogue 
in  American  higher  education.  In  any  event, 
be  one's  judgment  of  these  matters  what  it  may, 
we  have  here  a  fact  which  typifies  one  of  the  ave- 
nues to  the  acquirement  of  English  composition, 
of  which  it  is  the  business  of  this  chapter  to  speak. 
Valuable  as  are  all  these  various  precepts, 
principles,  and  practices,  they  all  come  down  to 
one  thing,  the  major  piece  of  counsel  in  com- 
position—  that  to  learn  to  write  it  is  necessary 
to  keep  writing.  Advocates  —  and  there  are 
ardent  ones  —  of  one  or  another  method,  never- 
theless agree  in  this,  —  that  to  learn  to  write 
one  must  write  and  keep  writing.  The  great 
rule  of  writing  is  to  write  as  much  as  one  can  on 
subjects  that  interest  one,  disdaining  no  help 
of  any  kind,  tapping  formal  criticism,  friendly 


244        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

advice,  the  practice  of  distinguished  men,  the 
trials  of  the  audience  or  the  press  —  but  keep 
writing,  keep  composing,  keep  looking  for  better 
expressions.  The  great  Swift  tells  us  that  during 
his  residence  with  Temple  he  had  "  these  seven 
weeks  I  have  been  here  .  .  .  writ  and  burnt, 
and  writ  again  upon  all  manner  of  subjects,  more 
than  perhaps  any  man  in  England."  —  (Letter  to 
Rev.  John  Kendall,  February  11,  1691-2.) 
De  Quincey,  Montaigne  and  hosts  of  other 
writers  wrote  on  anything  that  happened  to 
interest  them;  and  interest  presumably  begot 
interest.  It  can  be  only  through  desire  and  con- 
stant experiment  that  skill  in  writing  is  acquired. 
The  types  of  method  that  have  been  spoken 
of  are  but  crystallizations,  so  to  speak,  of  a  vast 
flux  of  suggestions  and  practices,  wherein  the 
most  likely,  ornamental,  and  tangible  are  put 
on  show.  Actual  practice  is  rarely  one  thing. 
Let  us  for  a  moment  consider  the  examples  of  a 
number  of  illustrious  men  of  letters  who  have 
left  us  some  hint  of  their  ways  of  working  and 
the  ease  and  certainty  with  which  they  have 
achieved  results.  Just  what  has  happened  is 
usually  a  little  hard  to  get  at,  but  the  main  point 
is  clear  —  that  there  is  no  uniformity  of  practice 
or  of  result.  Addison,  for  example,  is  said  to  have 
revised  or  rewritten  some  of  his  Spectators  as 
many  as  eight  times;  it  is  not  likely  that  these 
correctings  meant  complete  revision  and  rewriting, 
but  that,  for  the  most  part,  they  played  with 


METHODS  AND  APPLICATIONS       245 

particular  paragraphs  or  fussed  with  the  phrase- 
ology of  a  comparatively  few  sentences.  Macau- 
lay,  it  is  pretty  certain,  dashed  off  his  pages  at  a 
great  rate.  Trollope  tells  us  that  he  was  accus- 
tomed to  write  for  three  hours  a  day,  devoting 
the  first  half -hour  to  the  revision  of  his  previous 
day's  stint,  and  producing  two  hundred  and 
fifty  words  every  fifteen  minutes  of  the  re- 
maining time;  but  one  may  not  take  such  a 
statement  too  exactly  with  men  of  imagination. 
Pater  offers  a  contrast  to  Trollope's  method, 
in  that  he  wrote  on  every  other  line,  in  order 
to  allow  plenty  of  space  for  correction,  which, 
when  made,  called  for  a  fresh  copy  on  every 
other  line,  with  spaces  for  further  additions  and 
corrections.  In  spite  of  all  this  care  and  the 
comparatively  small  bulk  of  production,  Pater 
is  not  obviously  a  better  writer  than,  say,  Swift, 
who,  to  judge  from  a  passage  in  The  Journal 
to  Stella  regarding  the  pamphlet  on  A  Proposal 
for  Correcting,  Improving  and  Ascertaining  the 
English  Tongue,  could  produce  several,  perhaps 
as  manylas  six  or  seven,  thousand  words  of  great 
lucidity  in  the  course  of  a  day.  Ruskin  tells 
that  he  took  "extreme  pains"  with  parts  of  A 
Crown  of  Wild  Olive,  of  which  the  Introduc- 
tion "was  written  very  carefully  to  be  read, 
not  spoken";  Newman  often  revised  chapters 
"over  'and  over  again"  even  till  late  in  life; 
Mill  was  accustomed  to  correct  all  his  correspon- 
dence with  great  care,  making  a  fair  copy  for 


246        WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

the  post;  Tennyson's  In  Memoriam  and  Fitz- 
gerald's rendering  of  Omar  Khayyam  are  clas- 
sic examples  of  the  good  that  can  be  done  by 
revision.  Practice  is  evidently  very  diverse; 
the  only  really  constant  thing  is  apparently  that 
most  writers  of  eminence  have,  at  some  or  all 
points  in  their  career,  felt  the  necessity  of  taking 
pains. 

Results  are  not  more  certain.  From  this 
point  of  view  the  literary  life  histories,  so  to 
speak,  of  famous  men  are  interesting.  The  life 
history  of  the  works  of  Shakespeare,  for  example, 
has  been  made  a  considerable  subject  of  expo- 
sition, often  with  a  lively  and  compelling  fancy: 
stages  are  traced,  and  names  given  to  these 
stages,  whereby  he  went  through  experiment 
and  experience  until  he  became  the  practised 
hand  that  could  turn  off  anything,  and  was  suc- 
cessful in  all.  To  set  this  growth  up  as  a  fact 
is,  of  course,  not  the  same  thing  as  to  explain  why 
it  is  so.  But  the  fact  is  always  an  interesting 
one  in  any  case  where  it  can  be  stated.  Thus 
Addison,  say,  and  Lamb,  each  known  popularly 
for  one  preeminently  successful  thing,  came  up 
to  the  one  thing  through  a  series  of  comparative 
failures,  the  steps  of  which  can  be  traced.  Abound- 
ing geniuses,  on  the  other  hand,  like  Swift,  De 
Quincey,  and  Dickens,  appear  to  be  abounding 
possibly  because  we  have  not  enough  facts  to 
trace  their  previous  training.  Barring  a  few 
slight  fragments,  A  Tale  of  a  Tub  and  The  Battle 


METHODS  AND  APPLICATIONS    247 

of  the  Books,  The  Confessions  of  an  English  Opium 
Eater  and  Pickwick  Papers,  are  the  earliest  known 
works  of  their  authors,  produced  later  in  life  in 
the  case  of  Swift  and  De  Quincey  than  of  Dickens. 
The  point  is  that  these  writers  sprang  into  notice 
with  a  style  all  formed,  in  its  flexibility,  its  intri- 
cacy, its  dash,  or  what  not,  and  made  no  con- 
spicuous variations  or  improvements  in  the 
long  course  of  following  years.  They  applied  a 
style  to  whatever  came  up  to  interest  them,  as 
did  Dr.  Johnson  who,  having  somewhere  acquired 
the  well-known  Johnsonian  manner,  applied  it 
equally  to  parliamentary  reports,  to  Ramblers, 
and  to  polite  conversation,  leaving  his  mark  on 
countless  generations  of  high-school  valedicto- 
rians and  other  youthful  essayists.  To  such  men 
as  Swift  it  is  convenient  to  apply  the  term 
genius,  but  the  word  may  merely  cover  up  a 
multitude  of  facts  that  are  not  to  be  ascertained. 
Instances  of  life  history  might  be  multiplied, 
but  they  would  merely  enforce  the  conclusion 
that  there  is  no  royal  rule  for  writing.  It  is 
preeminently  a  practical  matter,  and  in  practical 
matters  the  only  thing  is  to  practise. 

In  sum,  writing  is  always  a  specific  enterprise, 
on  which  we  must  all  embark,  deeply  or  occa- 
sionally. Most  of  what  we  say  or  write  is  deter- 
mined by  some  desire  to  say  our  say.  So  far  as 
it  is  a  matter  of  deliberation,  the  little  that  can 
be  done  demands  as  much  foresight  as  possible. 
It  is  the  task  of  formal  English  composition  to 


248       WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE 

make  some  statement  of  the  ways  in  which  fore- 
sight may  get  in  its  work.  This  is  based  on  what 
has  been  done  in  literature  and  on  the  facts  of 
language.  The  results  are  on  the  knees  of  the 
gods,  —  that  is,  of  our  parents,  our  preceptors, 
our  patrons,  our  publishers,  and  our  public. 


NOTE  ON   BOOKS 

The  array  of  books  dealing  with  general  or  special  matters 
of  English  Composition  is  very  imposing.  If  the  reader 
wishes  to  study  the  subject  historically,  material  will  be 
found  in  nearly  all  essays  on  critical  theory  from  Sidney  and 
Puttenham  down  to  the  present  day.  Of  the  more  strictly 
rhetorical  guides  the  following  are  as  representative  as  any 
of  the  course  which  the  study  of  formal  English  Composition 
has  taken! 

The  Art  of  Rhetoric.     By  Thomas  Wilson  (1553). 
Lectures  on  Rhetoric  and  Belles  Lettres.    By  Hugh  Blair. 
A  Philosophy  of  Rhetoric.    By  George  Campbell. 

(The  two  foregoing  belong  to  the  eighteenth  century.) 
The  Elements  of  Rhetoric.    By  Richard  Whately. 
English  Composition  and  Rhetoric.    By  Alexander  Bain. 
The  Principles  of  Rhetoric.    By  Adams  Sherman  Hill. 
English  Composition.    By  Barrett  Wendell. 

The  facts  of  the  English  language  are  popularly;  described  in 
the  folio  whig  books  among  many  others: 

Words  and  their  Ways  in  English  Speech.    By  James  Brad- 
street  Greenough  and  George  Lyman  Kittredge. 
The  English  Language.   By  Logan  Pearsall  Smith. 

On  the  theory  of  style  the  following  essays  are  the  best 
known: 

Style.    By  Thomas  De  Quincey. 
The  Philosophy  of  Style.    By  Herbert  Spencer. 
249 


£50  NOTE  ON  BOOKS 

Style.    By  Walter  Pater. 

On  Style  in  Literature.    By  Robert  Louis  Stevenson. 

(These  and  others  are  collected  in  Representative  Essays 
on  the  Theory  of  Style.    Edited  by  W.  T.  Brewster.) 

On  special  forms,  there  are  no  outstanding  books  on  nar- 
ration, description,  and  exposition  of  great  practical  value. 
Such  essays  as  Mr.  Henry  James's  The  Art  of  Fiction,  Steven- 
son's A  Humble  Remonstrance,  and  Mr.  Howells's  Criticism 
and  Fiction  are  variously  entertaining  and  stimulating.  There 
is  much  writing  on  argumentation  from  its  logical  to  its  legal 
side;  The  Principles  of  Argumentation,  by  George  Pierce 
Baker,  is  perhaps  the  best  practical  resume  of  the  subject. 
An  interesting  special  book  is  Paragraph  Writing  by  Fred 
Newton  Scott  and  Joseph  Villiers  Denney;  and  one  of  the 
most  thorough  of  the  vade-mecums  of  correct  discourse  and  of 
the  conventions  of  composition  is  A  Handbook  of  Compo- 
sition, by  Edwin  C.  Woolley,  though  it  may  be  questioned 
whether  any  book  of  this  character  is  at  all  points  equally 
applicable  to  all  English-writing  countries. 

For  practical  purposes  what  a  writer  needs  more  than 
anything  else  is  a  sound  modern  dictionary,  such  as  The 
New  English  Dictionary  or  The  Century  Dictionary,  or  good 
abridgments  of  them.  The  reason  is  that  the  essence  of  all 
good  writing  is  that  other  people  should  know  what  a  writer 
means  when  he  uses  a  word,  and  the  writer  himself  should 
know  something  about  this.  Any  good  rhetoric  book,  such 
as  Professor  Hill's  referred  to  above,  or  a  general  treatise 
like  Professor  Wendell's  English  Composition,  are  good  com- 
plements to  the  dictionary.  The  question  of  excellence  among 
the  many  books  of  this  sort  is  to  be  determined  by  personal 
preference  and  applicability.  To  have  much  practical  value 
they  should,  of  course,  be  modern. 


INDEX 


Abbreviations,  154 
Accuracy,  156-161,  188-190 
Acquisition    of   Vocabulary,    230- 

234 
Addison,  Joseph,  69,  142,  143,  175, 

244,  246 
Adonais,  77 

Aim  of  Formal  English  Composi- 
tion, 27-28 
Alliteration,  202-206 
Alton  Locke,  88 
Amateur  Emigrant,  The,  134 
Ambiguity,  188-189 
American  Civil  War,  The,  91 
American  Commonwealth,   The,  50, 

60,  77,  98 

American  Scholar,  The,  214 
Anabasis,  46 
Analysis,  240-242 
Anatomy  of  Melancholy,  The,  60 
Annals  of  a  Sportsman,  54 
Antithesis,  71,  217 
Antony,  Marc,  77 
Apologia  pro  Vita  Sua,  67 
Archaisms,  153 

Arguing  beside  the  point,  112 
Argument,   from   cause,   109;  from 

example,  109;  from  sign,  109 
Argumentation,  79-81,  103-120 
Argumentative,  formula,  104-105, 

113-119;  structure,113-119;  style, 

225 

Aristotle,  99 
Arnold,  Matthew,  15,  30,  52,  66,  67, 

68,  143,  175,  195,  199,  239 
Arrangement  (See  also  Order},  235- 

236;   of  sentences,  129-136 
Assertion,  107 
Association,  92 
Assonance,  202-206 
Atmosphere,  53 
Attraction,  194-196 
Austen,  Jane,  163,  160 
Authority,  107-108 


Autobiography,     Franklin's,      237; 
Mill's,  42,  66,  67;  Trollope's,  86 

Bacon,  Francis,  42,  214 

Bagehot,  Walter,  137 

Bain,  Alexander,  36,  190 

Balance,  208 

Balanced  sentence,  171 

Balfour,  A.  J.,  175 

Barbarisms,  152-156 

Battle  of  the  Books,  The,  246 

Begging  the  question,  111 

Beginnings,  39-45 

Belloc,  Hilaire,  52 

Bennett,  Arnold,  52 

Berkeley,  George,  60 

Bible,  The,  41 

Blackmore,  R.  D.,  203,  212 

Boswell,  James,  50,  60,  207 

Browne,  Sir  Thomas,  208 

Browning,  Robert,  232 

Bryan,  W.  J.,  77 

Bryce,  James,  50,  77 

Bulwer,  Edward,  93 

Burke,  Edmund,   29,   69,   93,   130, 

132,  139,  215,  225,  241 
Burns,  Robert,  238 
Burton,  Robert,  60 

Cacophony,  203,  205 
Cadence,  213-218 
Canada,  91 

Canterville  Ghost,  The,  166 
Capitalization,  173 
Carlyle,  Thomas,  93,  192,  195,  221 
Causal    enumeration,   48-49;    rela- 
tion, 46 

Celtic  Literature,  67 
Century  Dictionary,  The,  154,  232 
Cervantes,  M.  de,  84 
Charles  Dickens,  137 
Charles  Lamb,  213 
Chatham,  Earl  of,  225,  232 
Chaucer,  G.,  10 


INDEX 


Chesterton,  G.  K.,  7,  52,  98,  226 

Chronicles,  46 

Cicero,  214 

Classification,  54-59;  of  argumen- 
tation, 115-116;  in  exposition, 
97,  99-102;  of  .narrative,  82;  of 
style,  147-149;  of  writing,  79 

Clearness,  17-19 

Climax,  71,  86 

Coherence,  33,  64-70,  86,  139,  168- 
171 

Coleridge,  S.  T.,  69, 161,  212 

College  Magazine,  A,  237 

Comparisons,  105-106 

Complex  sentence,  182  , 

Composition,  7-141;  defined,  39 

Compound  sentence,  182 

Compound-complex  sentence,  182 

Comte,  Auguste,  198,  200 

Concentration,  60-62 

Conclusions,  72-78 

Conclusive  endings,  73-76 

Conditions  of  writing,  16-27,  32 

Confessions  of  an  English  Opium 
Eater,  247 

Conjunctions,  162 

Connecticut  Yankee  in  King  Arthur's 
Court,  A,  171 

Conservatism,  130 

Conspiracy  of  Pontiac,  The,  214 

Contrast,  71 

Conveniences  of  composition,  82- 
33,  35-36 

Conventions  of  composition,  172- 
175 

II  Corinthians,  210 

Correctness  of  style,  149-150,  152- 
175,  176,  189 

Criteria  of  composition,  34-35,  59-    ., 
72  /f 

Criticism  and  Fiction,  84 

Crown  of  Wild  Olive,  A,  218,  245 

Culture  and  Anarchy,  195, 199 

Daily  Mail,  The,  52 

Darwin,  Charles,  68,  225 

David  Copperfield,  87 

Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Em- 
pire, The,  50 

Deductive  paragraphs,  128 

Definition,  97-99,  112-113 

De  Quincey,  Thomas,  53,  69, 142, 
143,  180,  195,  224,  244,  246,  247 

Description,  79,  81,  89-95,  103 

Descriptive  style,  224 

Definite  words,  188-189 

Dickens,  Charles,  84,  137,  246,  247 


Diffused  conclusions,  76 
Direct  proof,  114 
Dislocation,  192-194 
Divided  usage,  162 
Division,  54-59 
"Don't"  books,  32,  233 
Dominant  tone,  53-54 

Ease,  197 

Ebb  Tide,  The,  74 

Ecclesiastes,  208 

Economy,  of  predication,  182-186; 

of  the  reader's  attention,  31,  33; 

of  style,  176-190 
Elements  of  Rhetoric,  The,  104 
Emerson,  R.  W.,  183,  214,  235 
Emphasis,  33,  70-72,  86,  139,  192- 

196 

Encyclopaedia  Britannica,  98 
End  transition,  128 
Endings,  72-78 
English  Composition  and  Rhetoric, 

36,  190 

English  Composition,  139,  192 
English  language,  10-16 
English  Language,  The,  69,  155    ' 
English  Mail  Coach,  The,  54 
Enumeration,  46-50,  90-92 
Essays  in  Criticism,  15 
Ethan  Brand,  138 
Euphemisms,  189-190 
Eve  of  St.  Agnes,  The,  Ml 
Evening  Post,  75 
Evidence,  107-108 
Exaggeration,  189-190 
Example,  71 
Excursion,  The,  42 
Exercises  in  composition,  239-243 
Exposition,  79-81,  95-102,  103 
Expository  style,  224 

Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher,  The,  53 

Fallacies,  110-112 

False,  analogy,  112;   example,  112; 

position  of  words,  161;  sign,  112 
Fielding,  Henry,  84 
Fine-writing,  187,  189 
Fitzgerald,  Edward,  246 
Following  the  Equator,  234 
Food  of  the  Gods,  The,  W 
Foreign  words,  153 
Formal,  composition,  9-10,  27-38; 

introductions,  43 
Franklin,  Benjamin,  236,  241 
Function  of  Criticism  at  the  Present 

Time,  The,  66 


INDEX 


253 


General  words,  187-189 
George  Eliot,  46,  59 
Gibbon,  Edward,  50,  185,  215 
Gilded  Age,  The,  218 
Grammar,  161 
Gray,  67,  68 

Great  Good  Place,  The,  54 
Greek  Studies,  169 
Green,  J.  R.,  183,  215 
Grouping,  194-196 

Hardy,  Thomas,  54,  88 

Harmony,  197,  201-219 

Harrison,  Frederic,  145,  242 

Hawthorne,  Nathaniel,  93,  138 

Hazlitt,  William,  235,  238 

Hegel,  G.  W.  F.,  42 

Henry  Esmond,  87 

II  Henry  IV,  111 

Hill,  A.  S.,  163,  169 

History  of  Mr.  Polly,  The,  89 

Holmes,  O.  W.,  235 

Home  University  Library,  21,  91, 

188 

Hound  of  the  Baskervilles,  The,  224 
Howells,  W.  D.,  84 
Huckleberry  Finn,  156,  227 
Human  Immortality,  68 
Huxley,  T.  H.,  66,  67,  181,  212 
Hyperbole,  71,  190 

Idea  of  a  University,  The,  67,  234 

Ideal  paragraph,  122-123,  140-141 

Illustration,  71 

Imitation,  236-238 

Improprieties,  152,  156-161 

In  a  Cage,  54 

Increment  of  style,  190-196 

Indirect  order,  193,  194 

Inductive  paragraphs,  128 

Inevitable  phrases,  14 

Informal  composition,  7-8 

In  Memoriam,  246 

Interest,  23-25 

Introductions,  39-45 

Irony,  71,  190,  193 

Ivanhoe,  88,  90,  94 

James,  G.  P.  R.,  93 

James,  Henry,  54,  87,  224 

James,  William,  66,  68,  173,  185, 

186 

Jeffrey,  F.,  42 
Jevons,  W.  S.,  9 
Jingles,  205 
Johnson,  Samuel,  51,  130, 160,  186, 

207,  215,  247 


Journal  to  Stella,  245 
Journalistic  style,  225,  226 

Keats,  John,  15,  89,  202,  238,  241 

Kendall,  John,  244 

Kidnapped,  63,  88 

Kind  of  word,  186-192 

Kinds  of  sentence,  170-171, 182-183 

Kingsley,  Charles,  88 

Lamb,  Charles,  53,  212,  246 
Lamia,  241 

Landmarks  in  French  Literature,  61 
Language,  11-16 
Latin  words,  187,  241 
Laws  of  writing,  16 
Lectures  on  Evolution,  67 
Length  of  sentences,  167-168 
Letters,  172 
Lewes,  G.  H.,  31 
Ligeia,  53 

Literary  devices,  71,  86 
Live  questions,  105-106 
Localisms,  154 
Locke,  John,  214 
Logic,  108-112 

Logical,  classification,  56-57;  end- 
ings, 73-76;  enumeration,  49-50 
Loose  sentence,  170-171 
Lord  Arthur  Savile's  Crime,  165 
Lorna  Doone,  87,  203 

Macaulay,  T.  B.,  19,  28,  42,  64,  71, 
130,  135,  183,  215,  221,  222,  240, 
245 

Macaulay,  198,  223 

McDougall,  William,  33,  216 

Marble  Faun,  The,  94 

Mark  Twain,  171,  218,  226,  234 

Masefield,  John,  167 

Masque  of  the  Red  Death,  The,  53 

Master  of  Ballantrae,  The,  63 

Material,  17-18 

Maurice  de  Gufrin,  15 

Maximum  of  meaning,  37-38 

Meaning  of  Truth,  The,  185 

Metaphor,  191-192 

Meter,  201-204 

Method,  of  elimination,  116-117; 
of  functions,  117-118;  of  objec- 
tions, 118;  in  composition,  229- 
248 

Metonymy,  190 

Middle,  45-72 

Middlemarch,  60 

Mill,  J.  S.,  9,  42,  52,  64,  66,  68,  118, 
133,  135,  221,  222,  225,  245 


254 


INDEX 


Mill  on  the  Floss,  The,  74 

Milton,  John,  77,  209,  210 

Mixed  Metaphors,  191 

Models,  69 

Momentum,  87 

Montaigne,  M.  de,  41,  226,  238,  244 

Morley,  John,  181,  198,  221 

Mornings  in  Florence,  169 

Moulton,  R.  G.,  47 

Movement,  38,  150,  176-219;  in 
argumentation,  114-119;  in  de- 
scription, 119;  in  exposition,  119; 
in  narration,  82-89, 119;  by  para- 
graphs, 123-126 

Mrs.  Battle's  Opinions  on  Whist,  53 

Myth  of  Demeter  and  Persephone, 
The,  169 

Narration,  79,  81,  82-89,  103 
Narrative,  openings,  43-44;    style, 

224 

Nation,  The,  52 
Native  words,  187 
New  English  Dictionary,   The,  32, 

154,  232 

New  Machiavelli,  The,  195 
Newman,  J.  H.,  30,  66,  67,  77,  234, 

245 

New  words,  153 
New  York  Journal,  121 
Number  of  words,  176-186 


Obscurity,  163-164 
Omar  Khayyam,  246 


On  a  Piece  of  Chalk,  67,  212 

On  English  Prose,  145,  242 

On  First  Looking  into  Chapman's 
Homer,  89 

On  Liberty,  42,  66,  118,  133 

On  Style  in  Literature,  217 

On  Translating  Homer,  239 

Oratory,  226 

Order,  19-20;  of  cause,  46;  in  de- 
scription, 91-92;  of  position,  47; 
of  time,  45-46 

Origin  of  Species,  The,  50,  60 

Palmer,  G.  H.,  232 

Paradoxical  writers,  71 

Paragraphs,  121-141;  develop- 
ment, 129-136;  material,  126- 
127;  summary,  241;  transitions, 
126,  127-129 

Parkrnan,  Francis,  214,  215 

Partition,  76 

Pater,  Walter,  93,  166,  169,  170, 
213,  245 


Periodic  sentence,  170,  171 
Personal    Memoirs   of    Ulysses   8. 

Grant,  46 

Personification,  190 
Phaedrus,  55 

Philosophy  of  Style,  The,  147,  223 
Pickwick  Papers,  247 
Place  of  words,  192-196 
Plato,  55 
Pleonasm,  178 
Plot,  83 
Poe,  E.  A.,  53 
Point  of  departure,  41-42 
Post  hoc,  ergo  propter  hoc,  111 
Practical  classification,  57-58 
Practice  in  writing,  242-246 
Preposition,  162 
Prevailing  mood,  5i,  53-54 
Pride  and  Prejudice,  87,  163 
Principles  of  composition,  16,  32-33 
Principles    of  Rhetoric,    The,    163, 

169 

Process  exposition,  100-101 
Progression,  15,  39,  45-72 
Prolixity,  178 
Proposal  for  Correcting,  Improving, 

and     Ascertaining     the     English 

Tongue,  A,  245 
Proposition,  97-98,  106-107 
Prose  rhythm,  206-219 
Psalms,  The,  208 
Psychology,  33,  216 
Publication,  25-27 
Punctuation,  173-174 
Puns,  205 
Pure  movement,  150,  197-219 

Raleigh,  Sir  Walter,  209,  210 

Rambler,  The,  247 

Recurrence,  208 

Redundancy,  176-180 

Reflections    on    the    Revolution    in 

France,  131,  132 
Refutation,  114 
Regard  for  the  reader,  20-21 
Relativity  of  style,  220-228 
Repetition,  198-200 
Return  of  the  Native,  The,  54 
Rhetoric,  16 

Rhetorical  analysis,  240-241 
Rhythm,  201-219 
Rime,  202,  203-204 
Ring  and  the  Book,  The,  87 
Ringwalt,  R.  C.,  118 
Rob  Roy,  169 
Ruskin,  John,  28,  77,  143,  167,  169, 

205,  206,  218,  245 


INDEX 


255 


Sacred  Fount,  The,  54 

Samuel  Johnson,  50,  60 

Saturday  Review,  The,  52 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  84,  88,  90,  93,  94, 

169 

Selection,  71 

Self-Cultivation  in  English,  232 
Sentence  connectives,  136-138 
Sentences,  11-12,  142-151,  240 
Shakespeare,  William,  135,  161, 

226,  238,  246 
Shakespeare,  167 

Shakespeare  as  a  Dramatic  Artist,  47 
Shaw,  G.  B.,  52,  98 
Short  story,  85 
Short  words,  186-187 
Simile,  191 
Simple  sentence,  182 
Simple  words,  186-187 
Siris,  60 

Slang,  154,  159-160,  189-190 
Smith,  L.  P.,  10,  69,  155 
Smoke,  54 
Socrates,  55 
Solecisms,  161-162 
Sounds,  203 

South  Sea  House,  The,  53 
Special  forms  of  beginning,  42—43 
Specific  words,  187-189 
Spectator,  The,  52 
Spectator  (Addison's),  237,  244 
Spelling,  171-173,  274 
Spencer,  Herbert,  31,  147,  181,  193, 

194,  223 

Spoken  language,  26-27 
Stale  metaphors,  191 
Standard,  The,  75 
Static  endings,  72-73 
Steele,  Sir  Richard,  143 
Stevenson,  R.  L.,  15,  63,  86,  88,  93, 

134,  197,  216,  217,  236,  237,  240 
Stock  phrases,  12-14 
Stones  of  Venice,  The,  205 
Strachey,  G.  L.,  61 
Stratford,  177 
Structure,  39-141;  faults  of,  44,  45, 

241 

Student's  theme,  135,  171,  177,  181 
Study  of  English  composition,  7-38 
Style,  30, 142-228;  as  manner,  142- 

144;   as  sense  of  fact,  144;   study 

of,  146-150 
"Style,"  144 
Style,  166,  180 
Style  coupe,  138 
Style  soutenu,  138 
Subjection  of  Women,  The,  42,  52 


Subjects,   in   argumentation,    105- 

106;  for  writing,  21-23 
Subordination,  183-184 
Suggestive  description,  92-93 
Suggestive  words,  190-192 
Summary,  241-242 
Suspense,  71,  86 
Suspiria  de  Profundis,  54 
Swift,  Jonathan,  60,  143,  186,  244, 

245,  246,  247 
Swinburne,  A.  C.,  202 
Switzerland,  100 
Synecdoche,  190 

Tale  of  a  Tub,  A,  60,246 
Talisman,  The,  90 
Tautology,  178 
Technical  words,  154,  159 
Tennyson,  Alfred,  219,  246 
Tess  of  the  D'Urbervilles,  54,  74 
Thackeray,  W.  M.,  84,  137 
Thesis  composition,  51-53 
Three  Unities,  The,  61 
Times,  The,  227 
Tone,  174-175,  197,  200-201 
Too  few  words,  181-182 
Topical  statements,  128 
Transitions,  127-129 
Translation,  239-240 
Treasure  Island,  63,  224 
Trollope,  Anthony,  86,  245 
Turgenieff,  I.,  54 
Tyndall,  John,  181 


Uniformity,  200-201 
Units  of  composition,  58-59 
Unity,  33,  59-64,  86,  139,  163-168; 

of  impression,  62;    of  tone,  62, 

63-64 
Urbanity,  175 

Vagueness,  188-189 

Vanity  Fair,  60 

Varieties   of  Religious   Experience, 

The,  68 

Variety,  197-200 
Verbosity,  179 
Verse,  201-203 
Victor  Hugo,  121 
Vocabulary,  157-158,  230-234 
Vulgarisms,  154 


Ward,  Mrs.  Humphry,  59 
Warner,  C.  D.,  218  „ 


256  INDEX 

Washington/George,  214  Wilde,  Oscar,  165,  166 

Webster,  D.,  29  Words,  11,  142-151,  152-162,  176- 

Wells,  H.  G.,  47,  52,  88,  89,  195  196;  and  ideas,  233-234 

Well  written,  28-34  Wordiness,  179 

Wendell,  Barrett,  139,  192  Wordsworth,  William,  42,  212 

Whately,  Richard,  104,  193  Written  language,  26-27 

What's  Wrong  with  the  World?  98 

With  Kitchener  to  Khartum,  46  Xenophon,  46 


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